By Brooke Cunningham
We seem to have a few misunderstandings running around that I think deserve some clarity.
1. The Big Eddy remains where it has always been, right next to Route 100 by Ray LaRochelle’s house. Anyone can watch the water spin in a circle against the rock before finishing its trip downstream. That spinning area is called an eddy and has always been called Waitsfield’s Big Eddy. Somehow it has recently been referenced as where the covered bridge is. Any paddler or sailor can tell you there is no eddy near the covered bridge.
2. There seems to be an ongoing discussion of the dangers of jumping off the roof of the covered bridge. This is a local summer activity going back much farther than the 45 years that I have lived here, without any accidents. I did it myself at 20, a rite of passage and a revered local tradition going back decades without incident. It is scary for the jumper at first, but no accidents.
There is a discussion that does need to be had though and that is the danger presented by the redesign of the covered bridge, inside the bridge and around the new abutments. I am not sure who signed off on a design that is so obviously dangerous. Even if it was missed on paper, once it was built and visible, who then allowed the contractors to leave without securing the gap between the driving and the walking sides of the bridge? Any parent can see that such a thing will attract adventurous kids like a magnet. Although there hasn’t been an accident there, it seems like one waiting to happen. Driving through it seems that a handy builder with a screw gun and some lumber should be able to close that up.
And surely snow fence is no solution to the risk of falling off the abutments no matter how much it is revered by town officials. All ages of visitors need a railing or something, to prevent a disastrous fall. Again it seems amazing to me that whoever designed those abutments didn’t see the danger that would be presented. It was then compounded when the contractors were allowed to leave without fixing the now observable hazard.
I hope we can find a resolution to these two issues before something nasty happens around the bridge. We all love the bridge and its traditions, but these issues resulting from a change in design, while necessary for the bridge, need to be addressed.
Let’s fix what is broken and stop harping on what has been going on for ages without a problem. Perhaps we can use the money for the sidewalk that nobody wants to fix for the bridge that we all love.
Cunningham lives in Waitsfield.
