I didn’t read Bridge to Terebithia until I was an adult. It’s a children’s book and for anyone who grew up reading the Narnia books or anything by Robin McKinley or Tolkien or Lloyd Alexander or Madeleine L’Engle, Bridge to Terebithia is a book for any child who ever dared to imagine.
It’s also a heartbreaking read. I will not spoil the ending except to say that the ending still makes me cry, makes me cry just thinking about it because the experiences of the main character are so similar to my own.
Children’s books, children’s fantasy books especially, are filled with doorways and wardrobes, secret gardens and hidden paths that open up to new and strange and mysterious worlds.
When I was a kid, I was always looking for those doorways. My friend Donny and I used to hide behind the hedge that surrounded my front porch. It was cool and dark there and no one knew where we were. In the winter time, we dug tunnels through giant mounds of snow the snowplows had pushed to the side of the road. We were burrowers. We were explorers.
We searched for the hidden because if it was hidden, then by definition it must be fantastical.
Later, when I was a little older and reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and A Wrinkle in Time, I became almost obsessed with finding hidden worlds.
That drive has never left me. I think it’s one of things that continues to make Hope such a special place to me. There’s the Narnia library and the secluded memorial garden. There are paths through the woods that are overgrown yet still inviting.
One such path was recently cleared and Pastor Debbie took a bunch of us out there tonight, in the dark, with only the moon and a little flashlight to show the way.
It was so incredibly dark, but there was something about hiking through the woods at night that seemed both charming and mysterious. We didn’t hike far, just about fifty feet or so until we reached a small clearing by the water.
And then we headed off to the right. There were two trees. One leaned slightly over the other forming a bit of a doorway. We walked through it, bearing left and then a few feet later, we saw the bridge.
Just yesterday the bridge had been a few pine logs thrown across a creek bed. But now, as if by magic, there was a whole bridge, with railings and Spanish moss trickling over the sides.
And beyond the bridge, on the other side … there was only darkness.
I can’t wait until the daylight. I can’t wait until I have time to explore further, to see what lies there on the other side of the darkness, whether it be Terebithia or Narnia, whether there be orcs or dragons, whether there be simply silence and the wind rustling through the trees—I want to know.
Because whatever is there, it is God’s and it is beautiful.
