I was ruminating about my attempt at hiking the Northville Placid Trail, and realized that my posts and photographs had a couple of common themes. One of them is: bridges!
The Northville Placid Trail, traversing a water system as it does, has a great many bridges. Their condition is, naturally, of great concern to hikers. The condition varies wildly.
Some of them were clearly carefully engineered.
The engineering of others is best described as, "it just happened."
Some of them are brand new, and stand proud and handsome.
Some of the new ones, alas, have already had trees fall on them.
Others are so old that they've nearly crumbled to dust, and the unwary hiker can drop through them into the muck below.
Some inspire confidence. A bridge on one of the old tote roads, unused for decades for vehicles, looks as if it could still carry logging trucks.
Others inspire vertigo.
Some cross for hundreds of feet, high up in the air.
Others are even longer, floating in the water.
Some are no longer there, and most likely will never rise again.
Some have been washed away, but wait patiently for their footings to be relaid.
Some exist only by the good grace of the beavers.
And sometimes there's no bridge, and you simply must put up with wet feet.
Wet feet or dry, there's always a view of water, from pretty glimpses at a beaver vlei:
to awe-inspiring vistas of magnificent lakes.
It's a beautiful trail, however wet.
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