Structures
Crossing Over
I roll down the window and stick out my hand. A rush of cold air hits my face. Beside me oak and pine blur into maple and cypress. The east-west line of County Road 316 stretches ahead and then begins to rise, culminating at a peak beyond which I cannot see. I press harder on the gas. My truck climbs faithfully.
Gradually the trees fall away. My hand in the air rises like an airplane wing. Up, up, up I go — like in that dream I had, when I flew over the other side, weightless, and fell toward a sparkling sea. Except this time the road does not end, and suddenly I’m over everything, on top of everything, soaring like a great blue heron over the forests and swamps of the Ocklawaha. I take my foot off the gas. The engine rests. For a moment life is still. Calm. Suspended in the quiet majesty of first light. But only for a moment. Then I descend into the forest.
I wonder if Nikki ever felt this way.
A vehicle crosses the Eureka Bridge at sunrise.
Under the Bridge
Of the three high-profile bridges completed for the Cross Florida Barge Canal, the Eureka Bridge is my favorite. It’s the one I cross each time I visit the Ocala National Forest, and so it symbolizes a sort of threshold to adventure. On the east side of the bridge there is a street that leads to a small boat ramp and a series of meandering roads below. I take it.
Under the bridge I feel small. To my left, tucked beneath one of the wooden “fenders” originally designed to protect the concrete columns from shipping barge collisions, there is a memorial for Nikki. I searched her name but found nothing. I wonder if she ever crossed the bridge with her hand out the window. I wonder what the river meant to her.
This trip was a failure on paper. My intention was to drive to Ray Wayside Park and photograph the State Road 40 Bridge and the confluence of the Silver and Ocklawaha Rivers. The Eureka Bridge was only meant to be a short stop along the way. But I never made it to Ray Wayside. I became enchanted by the Eureka Bridge, lost in its many kept secrets and stories only available to those who pause and listen.
Scattered throughout North Central Florida are structures — bridges, piles, spillways, locks and dams — all designed and engineered with the singular purpose of constructing a shipping canal from one side of Florida to the other. And while my ultimate goal is to document the Ocklawaha River, I find that these structures, these relics of human ingenuity and destruction, are as much a part of the river’s story as the river itself. Regardless of their original intent, they have become new parts of the landscape, new objects of people’s experiences with the river. And for that they are worth documenting.
Driving east toward Fort McCoy and Eureka
My truck parked beneath the bridge
A memorial for Nikki
County Road 316 looking west toward Eureka and Fort McCoy
A line of fog follows the Ocklawaha River southeast during sunrise.