Memory fails me; it does not seem like it has been that long. But, if my photo history is an accurate representation, I have not been to Campbell’s Covered Bridge since 2017. That was the year I found out I had an aggressive form of prostate cancer, which led to many anxious days and weeks, and eventually to an operation to remove my prostate. The recovery time extended considerably because of a couple of incisions that did not heal properly. For a long time after that I just was not in the mood for hiking and photography. In 2018 and 2019 I went from around 100 hiking trips per year to about ½ dozen per year. And then along came the Covid-19 scare.
The parks shut down. I stayed home.
So, yes, it has been a while since I visited Campbell’s Covered Bridge. The bridge has deteriorated since my last visit. I found that unsettling. It needs repair and a new paint job, which has happened a few times in the past. I don’t even know who’s in charge of that sort of thing, but I hope it happens.
Campbell’s Covered Bridge is both a source of inspiration and a source of frustration for me. On the days when there are no other visitors, it is a wonderfully quiet place, especially picturesque in spring and fall. I feel challenged each time I go there, as though a very special photograph should be within my grasp, one that captures the essence and the history of that fine old structure. Every time I go there in anticipation of finding that shot.
And every time … I don’t find it.
So far, my favorite photo of the bridge is one I took back in 2014. In that photograph I sat in the dirt close to the bench in the photo. Using a wide aperture to limit the field of view, I focused on the bench edge closest to me, then took around 10 or 12 photographs, capturing bits of the scene in each one. Back home at my computer, I stitched all those photos together in Lightroom or Photoshop (I don’t recall which). The resulting image had only the bench in focus, with the bridge blurred in the background. The image seemed to suggest our inability to clearly see into the past, exactly what I was hoping for.
Today’s photo is a repeat of many attempts to capture the bridge while sitting in the grass on the nearby hillside. It is not my best work, but it is what I did on that day. I have already posted on Gab a similar photo that included a couple walking in the gravel toward the bridge. By the time I took the photograph with the couple, the light had changed, and I had shifted my position a little, to include a small tree in the foreground on the left side. That is probably the better photograph, with more interest points.
I will return to Campbell’s Covered Bridge in the future. Hopefully, three more years will not have passed by then. Whether I get a good photograph or not, the trip is always worth it. You cannot be in the presence of a historical structure such as that, important to the transportation needs of the era, without feeling the pull of history on your imagination.
Little imagination is needed to realize that at one time there was no road, only trails. And there was no bridge, only points in the creek where the water was low enough to ford across. The road and the bridge made travel much easier, and facilitated the needs of walkers, horsemen, work wagons, and eventually the occasional Ford car. Just below the bridge, off to the left, are the foundation remnants of a mill that once served the area. I do not know the exact history, but it is quite likely that the mill was either built or became prosperous after the road and the bridge existed.
What an extraordinary feeling it is … to sit on that hillside on one of the provided benches, all facing the old bridge. The calm and quiet, the forest that surrounds the hillside and the bridge, the romanticism of sweethearts on that bridge, carving their names into the wood for posterity … all of that can take you over if you let it, and send you back in time, to a day when life was simpler, and Campbell’s Covered Bridge was brand-new.