The Bridge of Fire Project for Burning Man 2009

Everything about the day was appropriate. It was cold and rainy. I had a virus from hell, so I felt worse than shit. We are broke, so we couldn’t go away and could barely afford to even leave town, but we drove over to the coast….over to Bodega Bay to find a place in a picture that showed the numbers on a marker on highway 1. This is an example of the things a person does after a son dies. You see, this was a place that we knew Donovan had been a week before he died just one year earlier. I had been dyslexic with the numbers, so it took us a while to match the picture with the reality. We also had some other pictures, but were only able to locate two of the places.

Then we got out and stood there wondering and asking the same old questions. At one point, I stood and looked over the edge of one of the shear, rocky cliffs and felt the wind push me back. I searched the raging high tide below for something….anything, but with no real expectations. I tried to see through his eyes. Is this where he got some kind of spiritual permission to go to the sea…..back to the womb of Creation? I cried and I screamed and I asked once again for the millionth time, “why?” There were no answers and no clues. I was sick. My chest was burning, my eyes hurt, and my head was exploding.

We drove up the coast until we got to the Russian River and then back tracked after deciding to get a drink somewhere. On the way back we stopped again at Coleman Valley Rd which was where one of the pictures had been taken. It was taken from a car and so we assumed that him and his friend had driven up this road and back down or maybe just turned around at this intersection. I walked out past the sign that said, “stay back” and looked over the edge again and looked out to the never ending sea. The sun was falling into the water rapidly, but there was no grand and beautiful opening in the clouds. So, it was just grey, cloudy darkness extinguishing this unhappy anniversary. I remembered that I had come to do a ceremony however small and rushed to get my medicine box and began to rifle through it haphazardly looking for the things I needed. Then, we walked down to small rock outcropping that was just barely a windbreak, and tried to light the fire…..and tried, and tried, and tried. Finally, Kandy retreated to the car to get a charcoal lit. While she was gone I arranged the burrito, the chocolate, and the cigarettes we had brought and cried some more. It was bitter cold by now and my chest was on fire. Kandy came back with the burning charcoal and I laid it on the small bits of paper and unlit matches. The fire began to burn after minor coaxing and we stood there both crying and I remember screaming one more time. I blew my whistle to the four directions while Kandy spoke prayers out loud. We put sage and cedar on the fire and the wind circled the rocks and disappeared in all directions. It was starting rain again by now, so that was it. One year to the day, and that was it. I thought to myself, “this was not good enough.”

I drug my exhausted body back to the car. My spirit was missing in action. We made our way back down the coast to The Tides, pulled in and found the bar. There was a basketball game on and on other guy who was obviously a local a couple of seats away from us. The world had not noticed a thing and was still moving in a forward direction. We sipped our drinks and I cried a little more. The drink warmed me and helped my headache, but it did not do anything for the aching in my heart.

Coming home, while Kandy drove, I made a few phone calls and found out that the father of a good friend had died earlier in the week. Kandy and I talked and we revisited some of the same words and thoughts that we had spoken so many times in the last year, but all I kept thinking was that it wasn’t enough and I don’t know when it will be enough.