The Bridges We Cross and the Bridges We Build

“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” Rumi

As our boat churned down the Danube toward the chain bridge connecting east and west Budapest, I thought of how we had crossed another major bridge to get this far.

We had traveled from the isolation of a worldwide pandemic to the tentative re-opening of our world.

The Danube cruise, a journey that took us from the Passion Play in Oberammergau to Budapest, had been postponed for two years. Now in 2022, we were bridging the gap between lockdowns and a return to life as it had been before Covid.

But would life ever be like it had been before Covid?

Three of our six traveling companions contracted Covid, despite vaccines and booster shots. My husband and I remained healthy, probably because we had been sick a few months before the trip.

It appears as if Covid, although not as dangerous as it was in the first year of the pandemic, is going to be part of our lives from now on.

Maybe there is no such thing as a return to life as it was. We can’t go backward, or as Thomas Wolfe said, you can’t go home again. The bridge from past to present will always take us forward into new challenges and new adventures.

We crossed the pandemic bridge, but life is not the same.

Another challenging bridge I crossed in recent years was the journey into a new decade. In my seventies, I can no longer pretend to be young or even middle-aged, yet I’m reluctant to call myself old.

But the reality of growing older hit home last spring when I balked at crossing a natural log bridge.

I hike a lot in the South Carolina upstate, and as recently as five years ago, I would have bounded across this bridge, confident of my balance and agility.

But now I hesitated. My balance wasn’t quite as good. My fear of falling had grown. Finally, I crossed, but it was a more precarious journey than I would have liked, and I wondered; how long will I have the courage to cross this bridge?

I hope for a long time because the views from the top are worth it.

One thing both Covid and growing older have taught me is that sometimes we choose our bridges and sometimes we don’t.

The bridges we don’t choose, we hope to navigate with grace, but even the bridges we choose can present obstacles.

Despite obstacles, my husband and I decided to travel as frequently as we could once pandemic restrictions were lifted. Covid and age have shown us that travel is not always an option, so we should seize the moment.

Since our trip down the Danube in 2022, we’ve journeyed to Israel, Jordan, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, and Africa, in addition to several short trips in the United States.

The beauty and wildness of Iceland made Covid seem like a distant memory, although I know it lurks in the background of our thoughts.

Israel and Jordan provided bridges to the past, where ancient ruins spoke of long-ago civilizations. The veil between past and present can be a tenuous one; something we realize when age-old hostilities erupt into modern-day wars.

War prevents us from traveling to Israel and Jordan again, so I relish memories of our trip last year.

Traveling can be a bridge to the past, a bridge to other cultures, and a bridge to some amazing corners of the world. I love crossing those bridges.

But in addition to crossing bridges, we also build them.

I’ve tried to build bridges with family and friends, because the relationships we build have lasting impact and value.

Traveling with grandchildren is one way of building relationships. In 2021, I bought plane tickets for two granddaughters, and we flew to Minnesota to visit another granddaughter. We enjoyed roaming the state together, visiting parks and hanging out.

Doing things with my grandchildren is a bridge builder I hope will have lasting value.

Building bridges that connect and nourish our spirits is an important part of life, and the greatest bridge-builder of all is love.

A bridge known as “Love Lock Bridge” crosses the Salzach River in Salzburg, Austria. Thousands of locks have been attached to it by lovers who are following a centuries-old tradition of inscribing a lock with their initials and attaching it to the bridge.

Once they attach the lock, they toss the key into the river.

I hope we can cross life’s bridges with courage and build life’s bridges with love, throwing away attitudes that impede our journey.

This article is in response to a Globetrotters prompt about bridges.

There were a lot of interesting responses to this prompt, but here are two that grabbed my attention.

Be sure to watch the videos in this one by Burnout Devil.

And this one by Jillian Amatt - Artistic Voyages made me want to start a fundraiser to build a bridge!