Bridges

"The hanging bridge is closed for repairs, It will be opening again in the fall," the sign proclaims. The footbridge crosses the Brandywine just above the diversion into the canal. The water is deep and still, a refuge for ducks and other water-loving creatures. I just checked; they still have chain link fence around the entrance and you have to go to another crossing point if you're going to the other side.
As I stand, stopped on my route, I remember a different bridge that crosses the Sethi Khola right at the entrance to Pokhara, situated right where the gorge is narrowest, so there would be less bridge to build. It's just a little wider than the one in Wilmington, maybe a little shorter. It used to accommodate the animal and human foot traffic, but now with the areas on both sides of the river developed, it seems sadly inadequate.
On our way to school in fifth grade my friends and I would always pause at least for a minute to throw a stone down the dark gully imagining we could see the foaming water that we could hear while it coursed between fortress rock walls. We could see the the calm power of the river before it entered the narrows, and just downriver it spewed out the other end of the gorge in a torrent of white water. We never heard the rock hit bottom, but we had to try anyway. It never lost its intrigue.
It reminds me of another gorge, deeper and narrower, that I visited with my husband years later. It crosses the Rio Pastaza near Baños in Ecuador, under the shadow of the volcano Tungurahua. That must have been the vacation my husband and I took when our oldest two children stayed with Grami and Grampim when we realized there would be another one joining our family soon. We took pictures posing on the rocks in the pool at the bottom of that gorge with the untamed river tumbling in the background.
The pictures, snapped at a moment in time, span spaces and times in my life, a testament to deep gorges successfully crossed.

At the Well

My favorite Bible story is the Woman at the Well in John 4.
Jesus is walking along with his disciples (see Hot Tea at Dawn). They come to a well at midday and stop for a rest. There's a tree to sit under (oh, was that just my imagination?), and the disciples trek into town to find something to eat, while Jesus rests. He gets in a conversation with a woman who comes for water. That's strange, because women don't come for water at midday. That's strange because men don't talk to women. But these two end up talking about life-changing issues--the woman goes back to her neighborhood with renewed life; Jesus can continue his journey refreshed with liquid water and fortified by a meaningful interaction.
I can picture the tree, huge, overshadowing the well and the road, with a built up stone platform at the right height for leaning loads on, and for setting out a picnic lunch on. I can picture the water, with women gathering at dawn and dusk chatting as they wait in line to fill, and hoisting their jugs up with water that must last the day. The complex routine of who gets to go first is well-established and practical, to avoid dispute. If you need to do laundry, you have to wait till the end, no matter what your rank. When a man comes by, he jumps the whole line, but he knows better than to linger. He definitely doesn't come to talk. I can picture the well, abandoned and dry at the middle of the day because there is no one to draw the water.
I tried to take a picture of it once, and it broke the camera. There was too much to fit in a print. (I also had the lens pointing directly into the sun. This was the old days, when that mattered.) Imagine what Jesus would talk with you about!