Awake

In the mornings here, all the elements come together in a great
fusion. A soft blue glow fills the sky, breaking the night, and the
water rises, drifting up into the air as mist, a ground-hugging cloud
that envelops the shore and the water and the bridge's huge girders.
The mist licks over the grass, feeling its way over stones and pebbles
and coke cans. Then the dark blue glow shifts to a red, deep and dark,
spreading out from the horizon up into the sky, covering the city,
turning the skyscrapers in the distance black with shadow. From where I
sit, one gargantuan building stretches up, blocking my view of the
rising star. The morning light streams from the building's edges,
flicking from window to window, the entire city becoming as fire, just
for a brief moment.

The mist shivers in anticipation of the forthcoming heat, shifting,
beginning its slow and wandering retreat back to the water. The warm
shine continues to spread outward, the obscuring building becomes a
shining white shape, a pitch black sliver of nothing at its centre, and
then there is what appears to be an explosion atop. The sun rises up
into view, and the bridge and the water and myself and the rest of the
city behind me is covered in the morning light.

This great city is separated by a greater river, straight down the
middle, with the bridge connecting the two sides. A collection of
rusted girders, clamped together, suspended tentatively above the water
by hundreds of wires, themselves held in the air by huge towers,
stretching up away from the traffic below.

Only a few people know of the steps; the accidental dents and holes in
the framework of one of the towers on the east end of the bridge. If
you know the exact route, you can climb it. You have to get up early,
when the waters have receded a little, and wade out through the mud
about twenty foot from the shore, where the huge iron leg impacts into
the shifting ground. The bridge stretches out to the west, disappearing
into the darkness of the morning. The grassy bank rises sharply to the
east, up to the main road where the bridge reconnects with the land. It
is at this point that you start to climb. This part is easy; hundreds
of holes and dents punched by mischievous children and well-meaning
drunks. Scaling up to the road level is simple. Nobody ever starts
climbing from the road level itself, though. If you don't start from
the bottom of the leg, then you're nobody.

As you get higher and higher, so the climb becomes more difficult.
Handholds become scarcer, the wind gets stronger, the air colder. Some
people have hammered in objects to aid ascent - about halfway up the
tower there is a small plastic doll's head, nail-gunned into the bridge
framework. Eventually you reach the top of the tower, where all the
support wires converge, before dropping away back down to the road,
then rising gracefully back up to the next suspension tower, a good
fifty metres away. The top of the tower is perhaps two metres across.
Not much room when it's a really windy day. The police tried to stop us
climbing once, but they gave it up. It wasn't worth their trouble, and
nobody's fallen off yet.

Climbing up this morning, it was a simple affair. No strong winds, no
rain, pollution wasn't too bad - which makes breathing easier, and also
means the handholds aren't too slippery. Now, staring out at the city,
the light of day established and the sun hovering just above the
buildings, I can see it's going to be a beautiful day.