Two days after Hurricane Irene passed through Vermont, you can still hear the sound of roaring water virtually everywhere. One of the saddest YouTube videos showing the unbelievable violence along the state's ordinarily placid waterways is the 20-second clip shot by Susan Hammond, of Lower Bartonsville, in the southeastern part of the state.
Perhaps it's the simple, humble way that the Bartonsville Covered Bridge seems to say goodbye, bowing first at its far end, then slipping behind the trees while keeping its structure, and its dignity, intact until its peaked roof slips into the Williams River.
Perhaps it's the grief in the voices of the onlookers. We all know that tourists like to take pictures of Vermont's iconic covered bridges; what this clip shows is the deep affection that Vermonters feel for these structures, and the terrible sense of loss when one disappears.
Most bridges are simply crossings, a means from one place to the next. But covered bridges seem like dwellings. They give a sort of permanence to transitions, and impart to the otherwise ordinary act of driving somewhere a special texture and a mystery. Perhaps their claim on the imagination has something to do with that momentous crossing everyone makes, to death.
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Vermont has more covered bridges per square mile than any other state, more than 100 altogether. Most were built in the 19th century. Long before automobiles, their echoing interiors rang with hooves and cart wheels.
The Bartonsville bridge dates from 1870, and was, at 151 feet, one of the longest. It was a fine example of the “American Town wooden lattice” style of construction, which is basically just wooden planks woven together.
In the great flood of November, 1927, a much bigger natural catastrophe than Irene, more than 1,200 bridges around the state were destroyed. Those that remained standing earned the respect of the survivors who lived near them, and who probably identified with them in some ways: rugged, reliable, nothing fancy.
Almost all covered bridges are single-lane, and the act of pulling over and letting the oncoming car pass, and giving a little wave, always feels neighborly. They are dimly-lit and cooled by the water underneath, which you can sometimes see through gaps at the sides.
Some are built high enough above the water to make them prized jumping spots in the summertime, and if you leapt from a particularly high one as a kid (like the covered bridge at Quechee, which you can see taking a pounding in other YouTube videos, but which miraculously survived), sucking up your courage, trying to point your toes to avoid smacking the water flat-footed, you remember the experience every time you cross over it.
All of that one can hear in the strangled cries of those who watched the end of the Bartonsville bridge. “I'm sad!” we hear a man's voice cry out, and it conveys both pain and a kind of wonder at feeling so much sorrow over a bridge.