The Metal Bridge
What surfaced when I slowed down
After my marathon meltdown last week, I was given a simple assignment: take a contemplative walk every day for two weeks.
Not a workout. No swimming, biking, or running. No Apple Watch buttons. No internal dialogue. Just walking and listening.
Trying to shut off the narration felt uncomfortable, almost claustrophobic—my thoughts kept reaching for commentary.
Still, I walked. And listened. And tried, imperfectly, to let whatever surfaced, surface.
What bubbled up surprised me. I’m no poet, but what landed on the page felt less like an essay and more like a crappy little poem. It’s repetitive and uneven, but I love it!
I was an anxious child.
You take yourself too seriously, they told me.
I didn’t know any other way to be.
My GI Joe’s boo-boo made me nervous.
He’s a soldier, my father said. He has a scar.
I am an anxious adult.
I’ve been advised to take a contemplative walk each day for the next two weeks.
No pushing buttons on my Apple Watch. No internal dialogue.
You take yourself too seriously, they tell me.
I don’t know any other way to be.
I’m walking. I want to run, not walk. But I walk.
The Cambridge Creek Drawbridge nears and I hear the hum of tires on metal.
Hummmmm. Like the Ohmmmmm of meditation. The breath of yoga.
I stop. I listen.
Hummmmm.
Ohmmmmm.
The beach calmed me.
We piled into our red station wagon.
I loved sitting in the back-back and hanging my head out the window like a dog.
I listened for it, the “metal bridge.” When I heard it, the beach was near.
Very near.
I could smell the salt, the brine.
Beacon Beach in Point Pleasant, New Jersey.
My happy place.
The metal bridge, leading me there.
Hummmmm.
Ohmmmmm.
I’ve lived near the Cambridge Creek Drawbridge for almost fifteen years.
A million times, I’ve walked across it, biked across it, run across it, driven across it.
It took a contemplative walk in response to a meltdown to make the connection.
Hummmmm.
Ohmmmmm.
The metal bridge to the beach leading a sad and anxious little girl to her happy place.
The metal bridge in Cambridge making the connection.
Is there a sound, place, or sensory cue that has always signaled calm for you, even before you understood why?
Have you ever tried to quiet your inner narrator — and if so, what happened when you did?
I can hear the sound of the metal bridge...from my childhood...also on the way to the beach.
Ah! Thank you!
Lynn, I loved this so much! The repetition and "unevenness" made me feel like I was on the walk with you, meditating and then stirred by the surroundings. I loved the sensory images of smell and sound–harder to capture than sight, I think. And I loved the detail of the GI Joe's boo boo. That painted such a vivid picture of the child in the first stanza.