GrandMother Evelyn [Eaton] said that “No one cares for a bridge other than to cross it” and sometimes I feel the bridge that I am . It makes me remember a time when I was about 13.
My family went to Mackinaw Island by houseboat and one night I snuck out with 2 older boys. They took me up the hill to Fort Mackinaw and showed me how to climb up onto the roof. From there we could see out over all the buildings and the harbor across the straights. The Mackinaw Bridge was a string of lights connecting the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan with the lights of Mackinaw City on one side and St. Ignace on the other. I remember it now as looking like a diamond clasp that held the earthen robe of GrandMother Earth closed at her watery throat.
The bright lights at either end made the center seem the blackest dark and from that vantage point I could see why a person could live at one end of a bridge and never know what lay on the other side. If you are warm, fed and well lit why walk into that darkness on only a promise or some deep inner illogical prompting ?
I remember that night as I stand in the dark on the center of this "bridge" brought about by The Mother Lodge Journey. Occasionally I sense others around me and sometimes we even brush against each other feeling the momentary rush of familiar human contact.
Out here in the center of dark nothingness it does not matter if the soul we see in the night is pretty or slim or white or black or red or educated or rich or even speaks our language. The touch carries reverence for the willingness to risk insanity - not knowing sanity from insanity - to walk the bridge.
Out here on the dark center of this bridge I look out across time and water. Now and then, for just a moment, I can lock into the eyes of a small 13 year old girl on the roof of Fort Mackinaw. She saw the whole view, She knows where I am and for some crazy reason, I trust her.
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