OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2016
A SENSE OF COMMUNITY
IN A COVERED BRIDGE
By ED HUNT
For The Daily Astorian
W riter’s
N otebook
G
RAYS RIVER, Wash. —Inside a
bridge is a strange place for dinner.
Built in 1911, the Grays River
Covered Bridge is the last of its kind serving a
public road in the state of Washington.
Eight years ago the local Washington State
University Extension Ofice and 4-H organiz-
ers had a great idea. A fall community harvest
dinner featuring donated salmon and local
veggies grown in the valley — served by by
4H kids inside the bridge on a beautiful Octo-
ber night.
While tourists may occasionally venture
off Highway 4 to see the bridge, for us locals
it remains an important way to cross the river
to reach the other side of the valley. Just as it
has for the past 100 years, this bridge brings
us together.
Bridge history
Hans Ahlberg owned both sides of the
river back in 1905. He and his neighbors saw
the need to get crops and cattle to pasture and
to market. There was a foot bridge at the time
but the only way to get a cart across the river
was by ford the waters at low tide. Ahlberg
and his neighbors convinced the county to pay
for it, but many of the locals invested sweat
equity in the project to offset their taxes.
It became a covered bridge in 1908 to pro-
tect the wood from the ravages of wind and
rain. A century later, the bridge was weath-
erbeaten and at risk of being torn down. The
people of the valley, however, worked to
secure funding for a major restoration.
Rarely are bridges manifested by the hands
of a single individual. Bridges are creations
of community — monuments to cooperation,
knitting peoples across geographic barriers
into tighter daily relationships.
Amy and I were married at this bridge 24
years ago. She and her bridesmaids arriving
by horse-drawn wagon through the covered
bridge to Ahlberg Park. On hot summer days,
children cool off on the smooth stone beach
and swim clear waters the low below.
It is one of two bridges that are constants
in our lives.
Crossing the Columbia
Wahkiakum 4H volunteers serve fresh
local salmon dinner at the annual Grays
River Covered Bridge Dinner.
Community is what
people do to help
one another.
Photos by Ed Hunt/For The Daily Astorian
ABOVE: Community members enjoy a salmon dinner inside the historic Grays River
Covered Bridge. BELOW: The historic Grays River Covered Bridge is a tourist attrac-
tion, but also a central part of life in the Grays River community.
The Astoria Bridge just celebrated its 50th
birthday this year.
The Astoria Bridge shows how these
works of infrastructure don’t happen over-
night. It was almost 40 years between the irst
proposal to span the Columbia at Astoria, to
the dedication ceremony in 1966. It was not
an easy task. Washington and Oregon had
very different ideas about the necessity of the
bridge and how it should be paid for. Wash-
ington opposed having a toll on the bridge and
wanted Oregon to pay the lion’s share of the
cost.
When it inally came together, it did so
through bare-knuckle negotiation and compro-
mise. Compromise has become a dirty word
of late — as if it is tainted with weakness. Yet
compromise is the loamy soil that yields value
and progress in a democracy.
When the link between Washington and
Oregon was inally established, a reported
30,000 people came down for the dedication
of the so-called “bridge to nowhere.” Thou-
sands more paid the toll to cross it each year,
the numbers growing each decade.
The bridge was paid off early and the toll
taken down. Amy and I remember one Christ-
mas Eve, on our way to midnight mass in
Astoria in 1993, the toll collectors waving us
through.
These creations elegantly change the land-
scape of our possibilities. They open to us
easy access to neighbors and friends, jobs and
education, culture and life bound no longer by
the natural obstruction of indignant rivers.
Community
Walls
When I lived in Ireland a lifetime ago, I
would walk the backroads of crushed white
gravel. The hills interlaced by rough little
scars of stone. Walls — built up hundreds of
years long past as men and women cleared
the ields of the hard blue limestone. Walls of
stone upon stone without mortar to hold them
together. Only the weight of each rock’s indig-
nation kept these crooked little walls standing
angry centuries against the coastal winds.
The lots bound by these stones were small
and tragic, without gates.
If bridges are built of compromise and
community, walls are built up of grievances.
Like our grievances, walls can last years
— indeed well outlast their builders — yet be
held together by nothing. Gateless hard little
grids that let nothing out, or nothing in.
Bridges are different.
Quarter century
This marks 25 years since I irst set foot
into this valley — a college boy visiting his
true love’s parent’s home for the irst time.
In that quarter century I have become a ixed
point in a living, breathing community of
characters. I am still best known as Amy’s
husband, no doubt, but I have unintention-
ally made my mark here and there upon the
landscape.
Being part of a community is not always
easy for me. I am in no ways shy, but I have
an inner hermit that would much rather sit
alone by the ire. Most at ease when I am hid-
ing behind a keyboard or camera, I avoid par-
ties and crowds. I am a poor friend and a dis-
tant brother. Never had a clique of friends,
never joined a softball team or bowling
league.
When I do join, I worry over the poverty of
my contributions.
Yet, I have lived here longer than any other
place in my lifetime, and I know I am a part of
my beloved rain-soaked forest.
The connections we form with other
people are the cement that holds our lives
together. We are social animals, we thrive
with ties to other people. Research has shown
that the number of people we interact with
on a daily basis is a predictor of our sense of
belonging and well-being.
“Studies indicate that “social capital”
is one of the biggest predictors for health,
happiness, and longevity,” explains Cecile
Andrews, author of “Living Room Revo-
lution,” “Less Is More,” “Slow Is Beauti-
ful” and “Circle of Simplicity.” “The prob-
lem: we often do not recognize the importance
of social connection. Our culture values hard
work, success, and wealth, so it’s no surprise
some of us do not set aside enough time for
social ties when we think security lies in mate-
rial things rather than other people.”
Wahkiakum 4H volunteers get ready to serve refreshments at the Grays River Cov-
ered Bridge Dinner.
Community is what people do to help one
another.
In our little valley there is a food bank,
community education, a wildly successful
locally-organized blood drive. There are adop-
tions, weddings, births and funerals. Houses
hold the names of their previous occupants
long after they are gone.
No one is perfect, every face has a law.
Like a family, however, like your brothers and
sisters you learn to live together. As new peo-
ple move in, they either adapt to the ebb and
low of the river and the rain, or they ind a
reason not to stay.
We are, after all, a long way from any-
where and the winter is dark and gray.
So it was that we found ourselves inside
a covered bridge on a rain-soaked October
night. Hundreds of us, feasting on salmon and
ham, potatoes and squash, under amber lights
and violin, tin roof and wood walls against the
early autumn storm outside. The rain held off
just long enough to get the salmon barbecued,
to get everyone seated at the long tables.
So it was that we were warm and dry,
shoulder to shoulder while the wind and
rain battered aged tin and cedar, while mud-
clouded river lowed below our feet.
Here we were together the people of the
Grays River Valley. Here we were together, a
community, a bridge.
Ed Hunt is a writer and registered nurse
who blogs on medical issues at redtriage.com
and on other subjects at theebbtide.blogspot.
com. He lives in Grays River, Washington.
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