On last night’s .83 ride, we spent some time on the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” the unused and apparently abandoned section of freeway overpass at the north end of the arboretum in Montlake. It was a lovely evening, with ochre and pink cotton-candy cloud skies at dusk—we’d even seen a rainbow earlier in the evening—perfect for bike riding and beer drinking. And something about the post-apocalyptic quality of an empty elevated roadway just added to the beauty of it all.
I’d been to the BTN, also called, I’m told, the “Ghost Ramp” on several occasions, but never when it was still light, so I never so much appreciated its desolate charm. This gives me hope for our post-oil future, when we’ll have no end of such places to gather together enjoying the sun-drenched concrete giving up its warmth as twilight descends.
I love the concept of a bridge to “nowhere,” because, of course, it does lead somewhere, just not anywhere that people, at least people in cars, are headed. When the several dozen of us were languishing about, slapping mosquitoes that rose from the marshy lagoons of Lake Washington below us, we weren’t “nowhere;” even in my slightly intoxicated state I knew I was in some place that existed as an identifiable location in space—athough probably not on Google Maps.
When I pointed this out, someone mentioned that old Buddhist (or is it George Carlin) saw, “wherever you go, there you are,” and there was no doubt this was true: each and every person standing or sitting there was there, even if our minds (well, mine, anyway) weren’t entirely present.
If this is the bridge to nowhere, I wonder if we, having followed it, were all in the middle of nowhere, a funny concept, not unlike the idea of being at the center of the universe.
But that’s what we were talking about later, when some of us were in that new bar, Smith, on Capitol Hill.
I’d been to the BTN, also called, I’m told, the “Ghost Ramp” on several occasions, but never when it was still light, so I never so much appreciated its desolate charm. This gives me hope for our post-oil future, when we’ll have no end of such places to gather together enjoying the sun-drenched concrete giving up its warmth as twilight descends.
I love the concept of a bridge to “nowhere,” because, of course, it does lead somewhere, just not anywhere that people, at least people in cars, are headed. When the several dozen of us were languishing about, slapping mosquitoes that rose from the marshy lagoons of Lake Washington below us, we weren’t “nowhere;” even in my slightly intoxicated state I knew I was in some place that existed as an identifiable location in space—athough probably not on Google Maps.
When I pointed this out, someone mentioned that old Buddhist (or is it George Carlin) saw, “wherever you go, there you are,” and there was no doubt this was true: each and every person standing or sitting there was there, even if our minds (well, mine, anyway) weren’t entirely present.
If this is the bridge to nowhere, I wonder if we, having followed it, were all in the middle of nowhere, a funny concept, not unlike the idea of being at the center of the universe.
But that’s what we were talking about later, when some of us were in that new bar, Smith, on Capitol Hill.