Milestone Bridge

After you hit forty, official middle age, culturally we designate our milestones through our birthdays, the car we drive, the house we live in, or possibly, bucket lists. I tend to mark my milestones differently as a recent trip to the Oregon Coast underscored. You see, I found myself on the wrong side of a beach divided by a stream just deep enough, and cold enough, to act as a barrier to my crossing to the appropriate side for rock hounding. To journey back to the parking lot to cross a small bridge there would have been to admit defeat and slip in my ability to adapt. Especially since there was a perfectly good slippery log felled across its banks providing a short cut. Crossing such bridges without crawling on all fours, or head plunging into the chilly depths was a tradition for me since I was a boy camping at the age of five. If I were to prove incapable of crossing this bridge, I would indeed have to recognize I were entering the final phase of my life. I hoped to prevent this categorization by hopping on the high end of the log before heading across the barkless, damp surface to my fate. I duck-walked at first, shaking a bit before wobbling two times near the middle. The sound of the water passing underneath increased substantially as I balanced like a tightrope walker. Apparently, volume increases with the level of danger present. I took a deep breath, then charged the last ten feet before jumping onto the bank. For a time at least, I would remain middle-aged.