Straits of Mackinac: The Wonder – and Fear – of Bridges

I have stood helpless, as have many others, beside wild, swollen rivers gesturing madly to figures on a far bank, voice all but drowned by thrashing water and distance.  It is a primal scene as old as humankind, one that we have for millennia fought to remedy with rafts, dugout canoes, ferries but most emphatically with bridges.  An exemplar from childhood of these attempts to bind together opposing banks of a river are the curious, living-root bridges of NE India.  There, Khasi artisans learned how to take the aerial roots of rubber-fig trees on opposing riverbanks, knitting them together as living cables slung above the current.  Artfully joined, these suspension bridges would grow in strength, sometimes lasting hundreds of years as foot traffic passed unhindered through mountain valleys from bank to bank.  

Soon after its completion in 1957 I happened to pass under the magnificent Mackinac Bridge (Michigan) in a trans-Atlantic freighter bound for Chicago along the St. Lawrence Seaway.  That bridge is hardly recognizable as a descendant of the homely root bridges of monsoon Asia.  But my father, who once fancied himself a civil engineer, made sure we had pride of place on the upper deck as our vessel drew near the majestic Mackinac spans.  It looked for all the world like the masts of the ship would slice the bridge in half as we passed below.  But someone had stayed up late with a slide rule and maritime charts, and we slipped safely through.

Having traversed the Upper Peninsula this spring, our road route brought us to that arresting sight that joins the two very distinct halves of Michigan – the north with a prickly near-to-nature streak, jealous of its forests, its bracing air and lakes; the south flexing its political and industrial muscle, home to cutting edge academia and big-boy/girl sports.  The south taking only condescending notice of its boreal, snowmobile-loving cousins.  It can make for combustible conversation. (See preceding blog post with map.) 

Stopping in a blueberry café at the north terminus of the bridge we gathered some of its backstory:  the stream of RVs streaking northwards across the straits, escaping to springtime campgrounds along the Lake Superior shore, hundreds of them navigating the five-mile (8 km.) span for a mere $5.  The lore of the bridge includes one, Leslie Ann Pluhar, who on a rainy Friday evening in Sept., 1989, plunged off the bridge in her ‘87 Yugo falling 170 feet into the water below, disappearing beneath the waves.  The story, a horror from deepest midnight, featured on the front pages of national papers as her Detroit family suffered ghastly public fascination. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1989-10-03-8901190020-story.html

But worthy of pondering more carefully still is the reaction elicited by the bridge among those who suffer from gephyrophobia – fear of bridges.  As many as 1000 drivers a year approach the Mackinac span with growing anxiety.  Something about the height of its structure, that thin ribbon of road suspended over open water, sends them into psychic disarray.  Inner strength having fled, they stop before the bridge, incapable of proceeding.  But the savvy attendants at the bridge are fully prepared for such an eventuality.  They will call a confident soul to take the wheel, even while, as embarrassed owner, you crouch trembling in the back seat, and will safely conduct you to the far end wishing you a ‘vaya con dios’ as you gratefully resume your traipse.

This homely trope possesses a depth beyond the straits of Mackinac.  Just as we find ourselves divided in our families, communities and nations by politics, old enmities, suspicion and the unknown, we may fear the bridges offering passage to the other side.  What embarrassment or mishap might overtake us on that fragile bridge?  What of the fierce winds that sweep the deck?  Will the toll exceed our resources?  What awaits on the far shore?  Will grace and stamina equal the demands of that encounter?  Will we find ourselves marooned, unable ever to return?

It may come as a strand of hope to know that there are attendants at such bridges, too, who navigate them freely and ably, whose calling and practice it is to usher the traipser safely to the far side.  Like those living strands of rubber-fig roots that, knitted deftly together and slung over the divide, offer reliable passage to a far shore.  It is a passage that spans – and can gladden – the generations.