The Bridge

Tonight I was running with the dogs. It has been raining all day long, and it is cool, much like a rainy Midwestern October.  As I was running, I was looking down at my feet, and saw hundreds of little tiny yellow leaves on the pavement. The wet pavement was very shiny and black.  It was early and it was already dark outside.  After an insanely long heat spell this Fall, we finally got cooler weather here in Scottsdale, Arizona. We only experience a few trees in the desert that turn color and die and renew themselves in the Spring. The color change of the leaves doesn't stick around much for anyone here to notice really.  But tonight I noticed and the leaves on the wet pavement really brought me back.

I grew up in Wisconsin, eventually went to college in Illinois, and was surrounded by trees-experiencing the death, birth, and renewal that the four seasons bring.  I remember some years we were lucky, and the Fall leaves with their vivid color would hang around for awhile for us to enjoy before falling off and leaving the trees barren. Other years it seemed like the leaves were there and gone over night, again without anyone even taking notice.

In the Fall of 1993 I was a Freshman in college at the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley, aka, "the Center" or the local community college. That year the leaves hung around. We had warm days, and cool-rainy nights. I lived with my parents in the next town and had to travel across town, and into the next to get to school.  Everyday I took the Richmond Street Bridge in Appleton, and I would see these amazing colors on the trees, hanging on the slopes going down to the Fox River below. I don't know if there had not been a Fall that beautiful before, or if it was just me starting to awaken to my surroundings. Whatever the case is, it still haunts my memory in a comforting way.

I was listening to Samiam's self titled record a lot at the time. It would loop over and over in my tape deck.  In fact it was a mainstay in my tape deck for several months, even into that winter. There were three songs on the first side that I re-wound and listen to over and over:  "Home Sweet Home," "The Bridge," and "Sympathy." It was "The Bridge" (link to song & lyrics below) however, that really stuck
http://new.music.yahoo.com/samiam/tracks/bridge--793926
in my mind.  It was a weird time for me. I was living at home, while a lot of others went away for college. I wasn't ready to leave my family and the local punk rock scene I was involved in.  Yet I was trying to balance this new sense of independence with still being a kid. The song's meaning varies a bit from this, but I really identified with feeling insecure, and feeling confident about where I was at that point in my life. I guess in a nutshell the song is sort of about that inner child being afraid to stand on his own.

I somehow internalized the literal bridge I crossed every day to go to school with the figurative bridge in my personal life and in the song.  As I crossed the Richmond Street bridge each and every day that fall, listening to Samiam, I saw the leaves changing color. Every day they got more gold, red, brown, and then they started to become more and more sparse. When the leaves were all gone that year, I could actually feel my life changing.  It seems like as fast as the leaves changed, so did my circumstances, friends, independence, etc.  I still listen to this song and get deep. Sometimes it makes me happy and sometimes it makes me cry.  Today it did both. 

http://www.myspace.com/samiam