The most impressive thing to me wasn’t the bridge in the river, the crumpled cars, the mangled steel, or the vehicles sitting there perched mere feet from having dropped over the edge of doom etc..
but from the 4th Street bridge looking north on the now empty and quietly still I-35W..
feels post-apocalyptic..
just a broken down concrete freeway now..
eerie deadly quiet..
I would recommend that all Minnesotans go to the site as soon as possible..
not to "see it" necessarily (there's really not allot of it you can see (the corner of University Avenue and the 10th Avenue bridge is perhaps the best vantage point ) at least of the spots where I ventured))..
but to pay a certain reverence and tribute and honor to those unlucky who were killed, to those who survived them, and to those injured..
and because this is an historical moment in the place where we live and work..
and because soon we're going to find those that are missing, and then remove the debris, and clean up the site and begin looking ahead..
and then we'll stop downtown from time to time in the months and years ahead and watch the new bridge go up in stages..
and we will have gone through it..
and one day many years from now somebody will be driving (my hope of course is riding in a light rail train instead) and say to a child, "See this bridge comin up here?.. Well one day, a long time ago.."..
etc..
and those will be better days; better times..
for Minnesota..
[ August 09, 2007, 14:01: Message edited by: RJ ]
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