It's a bridge I didn't cross before I came to it. I don't even recall ever driving over it. But on my birthday recently I did walk across it.

     It was the nearly 120-year-old Brooklyn Bridge, a graceful landmark in the New York metropolitan area as it arcs over the East River and connects the land on Manhattan island with the land on the Brooklyn part of Long Island.

     The legend and mystique of the BB had been in my consciousness ever since I moved from Minnesota out to Long Island's south shore almost a half-century ago. A film producer friend once showed me his splendid documentary about the bridge. And I remember the fuss made over its centennial in 1983. It was first opened with great ceremony two months before my late mother Mathilda was born. At that time a toll was collected - one cent!

     No toll today for cars, trucks, motorcycles, nor for those on the pedestrian span where I walked with my daughter and son-in-law and son and daughter-in-law and grandson - and no charge for bikers and roller-bladers either.

     I write about it because the walk was such a heady experience. We were not alone on that balmy fall Saturday as the sun began to sink to the west behind the phantasmagoria of lower Manhattan's skyscraper forest. We were among hundreds of strollers casually moving in pairs and groups, coming and going. Cameras were abundantly in evidence. The lenses of our naked eyes were also busy panning the panorama over a full 360 degrees' view, seemingly high above everything. And, of course, we could not help but focus straight ahead at the cluster of office buildings housing the world's predominant commerce - I almost said the world's trade center, but that would almost have been blasphemy under the present circumstances. At first glance there was not even a reminder of the WTC within the groupings right in front of us but everyone I think "saw" the twin towers nevertheless. Ground Zero was completely obscured - you don't really see what isn't there anymore. But the twin ghosts were there and their presence was felt if not seen.

     We stopped to point out to one another the proud and tiny Statue of Liberty in the bay and far off to the southeast the misty beauty of the Verrazano Bridge and to the southwest the double handles of the Goethals Bridge silhouetted against the technicolor sunset. Three miles north the spikes of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and the chisel top of the Citicorp Center were in view. Below us nestled against Manhattan Island was the South Street Seaport, home of a guest sailing ship and shops and museums. If one wanted to learn about the construction of this bridge back in the 19th century and its reinforcement and renovation 100 years later, it was all there along the way on bronze plates with etched illustrations.

     What struck me most, I think, was the difference perspective makes. From up high on the Brooklyn Bridge I felt that the map of the metropolitan area was askew, no longer the familiar concept memorized from years of daily tunneling under this East River as a routine of my commute. Midtown, forever and ever the hub of the boroughs' sprawl, was this day no longer the center of the urban universe. Its epicenter was here on our Brooklyn Bridge. The subservient spans up-river, the Manhattan, Williamsburg, Queensboro, and Triborough bridges, seemed almost to be bending over in homage to this kingly monument.

     The design of the structure was rather regal also: the granite and concrete and steel towers with a filigree catch of cables stretching their arced strength between them and on to the land-anchors on both sides offered infinite patterned photo opportunities. There was a palpable sense of strength and security that came to me from being up there among the steel network

     My daughter, an artist and designer, when she lived in Brooklyn Heights, could see this fabled landmark from her apartment window and could study from there the constant two-way bridge traffic flowing on a humming, often honking, carpet of city sounds merging with the rushing rumble of impatient vehicles streaming by on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Beyond that she can, if she chooses, walk to work via the BB right down to her building on Wall Street.

     Most bridge crossers take all of this for granted. A bridge is, after all, just a conduit, a connective link from here to there over the water. Once upon a time that link was a ferry. But a suburban neighbor like me and other tourists who wander over to and onto the bridge can feel a kind of awesome appreciation for the kinetic utility of this creation - at the same time both a monument and a passageway for energized people and machines on their way somewhere.

     As we retrace our steps up and over the walkway/bikepath back to Brooklyn the dusk chill pushes us home, and as the sun drops behind the darkening cluster of the tall workrooms of Manhattan's commerce, we see the huge spotlights along our way begin to bathe the bridge in its nighttime glory.

     Oh, the beauty of a bridge! It offered me a fresh vista and a new viewpoint on the vibrant life of perhaps the most exciting city in the world!

     The Brooklyn Bridge will somehow always be a living metaphor for the connectedness of all things.

November 10, 2002