I've been exploring the bridges and roadways of Portland a lot recently. Not by car, like usual, but on foot. This means that I am seeing them in ways I have never seen them before; obscure angles and hidden beauties. Most often I find myself looking up at them. Tilting my head back as if I were trying to unearth the mysteries of the sky. these recent explorations have made one fact very clear: the roadways and bridges of this town seem drastically out of proportion to this city.
Portland rests inside a basin, with hills rising up around it. This becomes very clear upon first entering the city. No matter what direction you come from, the city opens up to you. This will never cease to surprise me. You come over the lip of the bowl in which it rests and suddenly there is a city. Not a big one, but beautiful.
I once read a book about a young king who had to search for seven sleeping dragons. One of the dragons he found was underground, but it had not been underground when it went into a self- induced hibernation, it had been in a forest. Now, there was a species of bird that lived in this forest that some called a "weaver bird" and it made it's home in the treetops; weaving branches together. After ages of weaving their homes, these birds created a new forest floor far above the original one. Sediments accumulated and time passed and soon people in this kingdom forgot that the weaver birds created the current forest floor and that underneath it lay a lost world.
The bridges and overpasses and roadways in this town remind me of the weaver birds in that forest. They stretch across the basin that holds our city like the web of a giant spider. Maybe one day the city we live in now will be a lost underground relic and a new city will be built far above all our rooftops.
