A Story with a Covered Bridge
It was in 1971, September. I was making a journey in the North of my country, to see the wooden churches there. The whole region was actually a miraculous wooden land. The households were having superbly carved wooden gates, each gate telling the story of a local legend (and there were plenty of legends all over the place, legends where Cosmos and History were intertwined). Traditional habits were different there, from village to village, as their past had been too rich to fit the region as a whole. People were speaking my language, only they were speaking so fast you needed time to exercise your hearing.
But this is what I had to discover there little by little day by day. It was not like that in the first day, and that's what my story is about.
Kapellbrücke, over the Reuss River in Lucerne, Switzerland(http://www.bing.com/travel/: Photo Editing by Lance King)
I wasn't alone. We were a group of three, quite young and ready for fun of all kind.
The train had left us in a very small station, and we had to wait for five hours to take a local train.
We tried firstly to leave our backpacks in the baggage room of the station. It was locked and nobody was there, so we took everything with us and left the station.
It was noon and the weather was fine. The street was empty, all houses had the gates locked and the windows covered by dark curtains. I was beginning to ask myself whether the village was inhabited or not.
What we needed badly was a restaurant, to eat something and have a decent drink. No restaurant was in the view. The street was very long, and we couldn't see the end of it.
A peasant appeared suddenly. I asked him for a restaurant. He looked at me and didn't answer.
I repeated my question. He passed by.
After five minutes there was the same dialog with another peasant. Other fifteen minutes, the same dialog. Had all these villagers read Ionesco?
Well, we approached the end of the street. There was a creek, with a covered wooden bridge over it, the most amazing bridge I had ever seen. It was a wonderful piece of rustic baroque. It had grace, it was like floating over the creek in a perfect balance, it was joyously colored. It was like a fairy tale.
An old woman was there, with a calf, in front of the bridge, and the calf was scared to pass on the bridge. The woman was asking him in all tonalities, but it was useless.
The restaurant was just there, near the bridge.
Lovech Covered Bridge, over the Osam River, Bulgaria(http://www.bing.com/travel/: Photo Editing by Lance King)
I did not keep any image of that bridge, so what I did here was to put photos of famous covered wooden bridges from all over the world. None of them is as marvelous as the bridge I have seen in that September 1971.
(Maine)
posted by Pierre Radulescu at
5:29 AM
2 Comments:
Wonderful story, Pierre. Thank you!
Bridges fascinate us. There is something symbolic in the act of bridging, of bringing together worlds apart. 'Building a bridge' is one of the most beautiful acts in human making, or words in any language.
Wooden bridges have more of an emotional charge. Wood is fragile and less resistant in time than stone. A wooden bridge needs human care.
The bridge in Lucerne in one of your photos has a very interesting story of itself. It is all decorated with wonderful 17th century paintings about the history of the city. I saw it for the first time at the beginning of the 90s, and heard a few month later that much of it was destroyed in a fire. A few years later I came back, the bridge was up again, and part of the paintings that were affected were renovated. A few segments were yet kept blackened as they were after the fire, to remember the permanent danger that any human endeavor faces because of the neglect or sometimes worse criminal intentions of other humans. Man needs to build bridges and also maintain them, that was my reading of the place and of its history.
By
Dan Romascanu, at 2:17 AM
Your story is really great! Thank you!
By
Pierre Radulescu, at 4:54 AM
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