Finally we reach the end, where the road widens into a parking lot. It’s pretty full but not packed, with cars that belong here—Jeeps and trucks with mud flaps—and cars that don’t, like Seth’s Acura. Seth loads the water bottles, jerky, and trail mix into his backpack. He kneels to double-knot his laces and grins up at me, a golden wing of hair across his forehead.
He told me as we drove that the hike is over four miles each way. He told me that there really is a bridge to nowhere, it’s not a poetic metaphor. “It was built in the thirties,” Seth told me. “It was supposed to connect Wrightwood with the San Gabriel mountains, but a flood washed out a big chunk of the road. The project was abandoned, but the bridge was already built.”
“So now people hike to it.”
“People do all kinds of crazy shit.”
The trail we take away from the parking lot is wide. Plumes of dust puff up with each step I take. The trail is crisscrossed with the imprints of people who have walked this way before us: hiking boots with their diamond-patterned treads, the zigzags of rubber-soled cross trainers, here and there a dog print, some big enough to look like a coyote’s.
We walk side by side along the trail as the sun rises up over our heads, growing hotter and brighter as the morning’s dampness evaporates, as the trail thins and thins, into the mouth of a canyon. I wish we were holding hands but we’re not, and then the trail gets too skinny and we fall into single file, me behind Seth.
We finished our coffee in the car, and even though I’m not thirsty I wish I were still holding the cup.
There’s a river that we have to cross several times to stay on the trail. The first two times we have to go across, it’s no problem; we make the first pass by hopping from rock to rock, and the second time we cross there’s a fallen log that forms a bridge for us. But the deeper into the canyon we hike, the faster the water travels and the deeper the river becomes.
At the third crossing, we have to wade. “Some years this river can get pretty treacherous in the winter,” Seth says. He’s strung his sneakers around his neck, tied together by the laces, and shoved his socks into the back pocket of his shorts. I chose the wrong shoes—my Tevas, which are good for short walks, but are already rubbing my feet raw. It’s been too long since I’ve been hiking, I guess, and the soles of my feet are tender. I take them off before stepping into the river, and the cold water feels wonderful. I wish I could just stop right there and let the icy water wash over me for the rest of the day.
“How far did you say it is?” I ask.
“Far,” Seth answers. He’s reached the other side and sits on a rock to put his socks and sneakers back on. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m fine.” I force myself to walk out of the water. “It’s just that my feet are a little sore. I should have worn my tennis shoes or something.”
Seth frowns as he looks down at my water-chilled, reddened feet. I feel exposed and stupid. I should have known better than to wear sandals, even hiking sandals.
“Take my socks,” he says, pulling them off his feet and holding them out to me. They’re black with a red stripe of stitching across the toe.
“No, that’s okay.”
“You’ll never make it to the bridge and back otherwise. Sorry they’re kind of sweaty.”
I take the socks and sit down next to him. The socks are warm and damp. He gave me his socks, I think stupidly. It just feels like this big thing, like it means something that he’s willing to be less comfortable so that I will be more comfortable.
Gingerly, I work my left foot into one of the socks. It’s too big. The toe part flops loosely past my toes. I refasten my Teva over the sock. It is better this way, with the sock between my foot and the straps.
We hike for two more hours before we make it to the Bridge to Nowhere, and we hear it before we see it—the music, the cheers.
It’s been so quiet on the path—just our shoes crunching in the dry leaves, the occasional clatter of a kicked rock, a few other hikers here and there, but all into their own thing—that when I first hear the music, I think it must be coming from Seth’s phone.
Then I hear the first cheer. I still can’t see the bridge, but the cheer is pretty loud.
“They’re jumping today,” Seth says, looking back at me and smiling this open happy smile, just so much smile that it kind of shocks me. I hadn’t noticed how long it had been since I’d seen Seth smile—really smile, like from joy, not from sarcasm or irony or because he was mocking someone—until this smile broke across his face.
Have I ever seen him smile like this?
(Have I ever made him smile like this? Do his after-sex smiles count, the half-lidded eyes, the satisfied grin?)
We turn a bend and there it is—this expanse, this vista, this bizarre unexpected impossible party.
There’s the bridge, kind of old fashioned, its railings made from concrete pillars, the buttresses holding it up, bleached white like bone from their years out here in the sun. All along the railing on one side of the bridge are people. Mountain bikers in their silly, tight, padded-crotch shorts, hikers dressed in official hiking gear like those ugly UV shirts and pants that zip away at the knee to become shorts, and kids our age or maybe a little older, girls and guys both in cutoffs and hiking boots and tennis shoes, and there’s music, the kind of music that you play at a house party, loud and strong and more about the beat of the drum and the scream of the singer than the lyrics. You know what the song’s about without knowing the words—it’s about anger and freedom and being wild.
All the energy on the bridge is turned inward, toward this black chick dead center, who’s looking down at her crotch where this lanky white guy kneels. He’s fastening the straps of a harness that she’s stepped into, he’s checking the buckles and pulling on the end of the strap to make sure it’s secure. And then he nods and stands, and she shoulders into the top part of the harness, and he checks the buckles there, too. Then he hands her a helmet that she puts on, pushing down over her tight, dark curls and fastening the chinstrap.
The guy attaches the end of the bungee cord to the front of the harness. He offers her a hand but she doesn’t need it, and she scrambles up on the top of the railing like she hasn’t ever heard of fear or doubt or regret. There’s this one long moment when she stands there, arms outstretched, staring straight ahead, and the whole bridge full of people, me and Seth included, share one held breath.
Then she dives.