The Hidden Bridge

A small stone footbridge, hidden deep within the ravine. I had a glimpse of it then, what could've been close to 20-25 years ago. My dad was taking me for a drive in Mill Creek Park, a huge expanse of trails and Washington State-like wilderness buried in Youngstown, Ohio. It's the city's gem, really. A maze of steep ravines, waterfalls, lakes, and hemlock groves where one could get lost among the many twists and turns within a variety of trails.

I remember it vividly. He was driving me along a road alongside one of the many gorges, showing me the spot where he used to park his car and give it a good wash. A little odd, I know, but he was reminiscing, and it made perfect sense at the time. I was after all, barely in elementary school. The park was enormous to me. It had no end, and offered nearly limitless opportunities of exploration. We were heading around a curve when I saw it: the bridge. Trees and the surrounding hills had eventually overwhelmed it. It was fairly dilapidated, even then. The small stone footbridge lay isolated and buried between the walls of the gorge. It came out of nowhere and before I could realize it was there, it was gone. I asked my dad to stop and turn around, but he had an agenda. I had never seen the bridge again since that day, often wondering if it was nearly a figment of my imagination. If maybe I had seen something else and pieced it together as an image that didn't really exist. I had spent years searching for it, learning that park backwards and forwards, but had never again caught a glimpse of it again. Until today.

Ruins fascinate me. As a kid, I had explored Mill Creek Park thoroughly for the treasures that it hides. First with my grandpa, who did the same thing when he was a kid, and then with my friends, whose love of rock climbing and the outdoors had gotten us into many, many memorable situations. The Park is old, founded by a man name Volney Rodgers. He bought the land in the mid-1800's and set it aside, untouched, with the vision of exactly what it is today: a wilderness preserve. Walking through the park is in a way like traveling back in time. Gone are the sounds of the nearby city and churning steel factories, traffic and the bustle of everyday life. As you walk through the park, it's not uncommon to come across a building, pavilion, or ruins of a house that could be close to 200 years old. When Rodgers bought the park, he didn' purchase it uninhabited. There was a hydraulic flour mill on the property (which still exists as a working mill to this day) and local pioneers had already started building on bits and pieces of the land, remnants of which you can still find today. This environment enthralled me throughout my childhood and well into college. In fact, I still go down to the park to just walk around, soon finding myself off the trail and clamboring my way through an empty ravine, just to see what comes up next. Today, was one of those days.

I was walking Kino in the park, along a trail known locally as the East Cohassett trail. It begins by the famous Silver Suspension Bridge, and follows the eastern rim of Lake Cohassett all the way to Pioneer Pavilion. About 100 feet above the trail is an all-purpose trail, a seasonal paved trail that is only accessible to hikers and biking enthusiasts. It used to be a road at one point, but closed down due to frequent landslides. Kino and I were about a mile in on the trail when he darted off and up the side of the ravine. He was following an old staircase that hasn't been really used in years. It's one of the many unkempt trails in the park...there are dozens.

Up he ran and then down into the gorge. I bounded up trail after him, skipping every other step along the way. As I reached the top, I saw what he was following, a spry young doe that had absolutely no intention of letting him get an inch closer than he was already. She bounded around another corner of the ravine, where Kino followed, as did I...sliding down the loose shale walls of the gorge, across the stream at the bottom, and into a side gulley where I last saw Kino turn. By this time he was trotting back to me, well aware that the doe was well out of his range. That's when I saw it, the hidden bridge, just...sitting there, exactly as it was 20 years ago. I had a different perspective on it now, being underneath it as opposed to driving well above it, but...I immediately knew it was the bridge that I had seen during that afternoon drive in the park, just by the way it was nestled in between the hills, by it's dilapidated state, and by the very stone it was molded from.

Without wasting any time, I was gripping my way up the side of the ravine, away from the trail and towards the edge of the bridge. The soil was loose and muddy, the effect of a day's worth of rain and sleet. After some effort, I made it to the edge and finally got to take a good look at the bridge that I had been casually searching for since I had been allowed to explore the park on my own. There are many footbridges just like this in the park, but most are still in fairly good condition, and actually connect two paths, or two sides of the ravine as a footbridge is supposed to do. This one...well, it was different. The distinct difference that I remember from my first sighting of it was that it seemed to lead to nowhere. I wasn't sure if that's just the way I perceived it to be, but now I know that it was true. This bridge lies smack in the middle of a ravine, halfway down into the gorge, with all traces of a trail on each end being completely absent. Its rails were rusted and half hanging off the side, a "no tresspassing" sign attached to the southern end. I climbed up the rest of the side of the ravine to see where I had seen the bridge from before and upon reaching the top, immediately realized why I hadn't found it before now. The road I was standing on was the All-purpose trail, the very trail that had been re-paved and re-routed after a series of landslides back in the late-80's. I had always been looking for an existing, functioning road, not one that had been closed to traffic for the past 20-some years. On top of that, since the trail had been re-routed, you're not able to see the bridge from the paved trail, but you can see where the road used to wind, and on that one missing curve is a direct view into the gorge, and of the hidden bridge itself.

I know, I know, big deal. I found a bridge. Let's have a parade over it and move on. I get it. But this was a really cool experience for me today. That one sight from the car so many years ago had stimulated years of imagination within me. I'm not sure why...maybe because it was so surreal...like it didn't belong in our time, in our world. I can't help it. It was fascinating. And what's even better? It exists. I didn't dream it up. I didn't piece together random memories to create something that wasn't actually there. I looked for it for a long time, years even. And at the single point in time where I wasn't looking for it at all, there it was. Funny how those kinds of things work.