Crossing bridges

My home in India, the one I grew up in, is a few hundred meters from the river’s edge, in the village of Melukara. (I say village because it’s not a town and it’s not really a suburb, but let me be clear, there are giant houses and paved roads and cable TV.) The nearest town, our town, is Kozhencherry, about five kilometers away.
.
That’s not actually true though. The NEAREST town is over the bridge, in Ayroor. Akkara, we say. Which just means “that shore.” As opposed to this shore. The other side. Across the bridge. Over the water.
.
Growing up, we rarely went akkara. And if we did, we didn’t venture very far. It just seemed foreign and unfamiliar and well, not home. On the odd occasion we’d buy fish from a fish monger just over on the other side, and hurry back. I had a schoolmate who lived akkara, and I walked over to her place once and that was a BIG DEAL.
.
The first time Stone and I went to India together, we stayed with my folks in my childhood home. As often happens when you go back to a familiar place with someone who shares none of your history with it (good or bad), I found myself exploring places I never had thought to before. Simply because we could. We would go for morning runs and evening walks...akkara. We found waterfalls and splash pools and bridges and fields I never knew existed. And it was all glorious.
.
I took this picture when we out on one of our walks, through a rubber plantation in the soft dappled afternoon light. I am always a little stunned when I look at it - that it looks so unfamiliar and yet it’s not a mile from my home. That town-limits and human-heart-limits are such powerful man-made inventions, useful only for the purpose of organization, and not at all for connection. That man-made things are not all bad, because bridges. That so much beauty could be so close, and that we might just miss it if we never cross that bridge.