Sallie Taylor

Bridges create access to another place that might have been impossible or difficult to achieve without them. More broadly, bridges help us to find connections to seemingly incompatible ideas, things or states of being. Being under the bridge, and on the water, is something all together different.  I was on fishing trip when we anchored under a highway bridge in a Louisiana pirogue. I was mesmerized by the movement of the rocking boat, the water reflecting off the underside of the bridge, and the echoing sound of the traffic passing overhead.  Joyce Carol Oates, in Man Crazy, writes that the underside of the bridge was a place not to be seen. At first pass, it seems frightening, much like our shadow selves; but in reality, it is a place of serene beauty and power.