Three Bridges at the Crooked River Gorge

“We’ve been here before,” the husband said. “We walked out here and looked over the edge, but the bridge was still used by cars. We drove over it.”

“What were we doing? Coming back from Montana? Idaho? That was years ago. 1996? 1997? When did we make that trip to the Rockies? It must have been then.”

Things looked new, but felt familiar. It was dry and hot and we were looking over the waist high wall into a 300 foot drop. The river below was a bright blue, there were bits of metal reflecting in the sunshine, a bicycle, a car bumper, a street sign. It was a long way down, a very long way. I am not afraid of heights, but I got a weird feeling in my stomach and my legs looking over into the Crooked River Gorge. There were signs in the parking lot and along the walkways that said, “Many dogs have died here, put your dog back in the car!” On the opposite side of the canyon, two people had circumnavigated the fence and were tossing rocks off the edge. Perhaps they could not see how treacherous their footing was. I know a woman who lost one of her sons when someone threw a rock off a cliff onto the beach below; her boy was  hit in the head and killed. It’s just a wayside along route 97, but Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic View Point was kind of freaking me out.

“They shouldn’t be doing that,” the husband said.

There was a sprinkler running on the grass; the spray hit the waist high wall and darkened the concrete walkway.  Three bridges span the gorge — a cast iron railway bridge, the old auto bridge, the new bridge — and they cast arced shadows down the stone walls and across the blue river. We walked down under the railway bridge along the edge of the wall, leaning over the side to take photos. I held on to my glasses. Even though there were no trespassing signs, there was an obvious footpath up to the rail bridge. I thought about that scene in the movie “Stand By Me” where two of the kids are nearly run over by a train. I thought about what it would be like to stand under the bridge when a freight train rolled across it.The sky was an amazing blue, there was no haze, the air was so clear even though there were forest fires to the north. The wind must have been blowing the right way.

“How many phones do you think are down there?” I asked the husband. “And baseball caps? And cameras?”

Below us, a scattering of birds flew from one side of the canyon walls to the other. A hawk drifted by under our feet. I wrapped the camera strap around my wrist and took some pictures. There was noting unstable about my footing. The bridge once supported rows of cars, loaded semi-trucks. Inside the concrete bridge rail, there was another row of metal posts strung through with cable to keep me from getting to close to the edge. But I still had that bad electricity running from my belly into my shoes.

In the parking lot I checked my pockets. Camera. Phone. Yes. Car keys. Yes.

Feet still firmly on the ground? Yes.

We got in the car and drove south. In front of us, the land was wide and flat and stable and the gorge disappeared in the review mirror.