A Dream of Building a Bridge

STEP 28 A DREAM OF BUILDING A BRIDGE
the night of January 18, 2008

An all weather road had to be built in a wilderness area, a road on which I would be frequently traveling. It crossed a stream bed that was now dry but would often be filled with run off from the storms, so the job of building some sort of a bridge had to be done as soon as possible. I had a bunch of material left from other projects and I thought they would suffice. But I certainly couldn't do the work alone. I thought I knew where I could get a tractor or two to help move some logs.
My plan was to put a number of plastic culverts across the bottom of the stream bed, put logs above them to the depth of several feet and then fill over it all with dirt, on the top putting more logs length-wise on which to drive. I had never done this before but the idea was the best I could come up with and the material was all at hand.
To my pleasant surprise, I easily persuaded half a dozen people to give me a hand. They all lived up the road and were glad to help as it was to their benefit also.
The one snag in my scheme was that many of my materials were simply inadequate for the job. When I got them on sight and looked at them, what I had thought were culverts turned out to be plastic flower pots! But more usable stuff was soon found. How, or by whom, I don't know. And I don't know if we used the tractors. All I remember is a bunch of shovels and a large pile of dirt.
The results was good: a useable bridge, but not one on which you would drive a Rolls Royce. It would stand up to a few high waters and maybe last for several years before it would have to be replaced or repaired.
(Throughout the dream there was an ongoing presence of my father who died some twenty-five years ago. In the dream he was very supportive of the project but could not take direct part himself because of an illness. I had to promise him that I would leave some work for him to do when he was able; he wanted so very much to be a part of the project.)

“The last cenury made the world a neighbourhood; this century must make it a family. The more I have studied economics, the more I have come to the conclusion that this is true. The chose is that or the deluge.” - J.S. Woodsworth

“Many hands make light work.” - common saying