C’était un petit pont de bois, un petit pont jeté sur le ruisseau. Il avait son charme avec ses lames de bois patinées par la pluie, le gel et les lichens mais, petit à petit, le charme de l’ancien a laissé place à l’inquiétude. Même les poids plumes y allaient avec prudence.
Le petit pont a tout de même une portée de cinq mètres ! Et il enjambe le passage le plus profond de notre petit canyon. Le défi n’en était que plus tentant. Le défi de passer à l’action. C’est ainsi que John s’est révélé bâtisseur.
Sans diminuer ses mérites, il faut reconnaître que les fondations (merci Claude !) étaient solides.
Les travaux se sont déroulés sous la surveillance des chats, des troglodytes mignons, des campagnols amphibies et, sûrement, de quelques inspecteurs nocturnes. Même les canards ont fait étape pour regarder cela de près.
Et le voilà, reliant la rive du jardin à la rive du monde sauvage…
Une réussite qui laisse le bâtisseur humble devant la puissance des éléments et du paysage:
John’s Bridge! – well, I’m flattered to see that my hard work to reconstruct our ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ has been recognised. But I don’t wish to take all the credit since, as with many of the practical projects in the garden, it was a joint effort in which Danielle issued the request and I did the back-breaking work. It has to be admitted that on this occasion I was easily convinced as, after close on fifty years of service, it’s recently been showing signs of breaking up at any moment. As in the words of the famous American folk song ‘Oh my darling Clementine’ the old bridge was about to ‘tremble and disassemble’ and I would surely have been charged with ‘homicide involontaire’ if Danielle ‘fell into the foamy water and was lost and gone forever’ on one of her morning walks round the garden.
Now the work is done I feel a certain sense of achievement but modesty forbids me from lending my name to the completed structure. Bridges seem to be named most often either after their specific location, or famous people or royalty – Charles Bridge in Prague, that’s OK, but John’s Bridge on the edge of the Forest of Darney, no! So, what to call it? Pont Neuf – there are too many of those already! The bridge leads from the garden to our ‘sous-bois’ and a gate in the fence separating our property from the forest – but Rusty Gate Bridge doesn’t have the same aura as San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Then I found ‘The Wind and Rain Bridge’ – that seems particularly appropriate this month. The only problem is that it’s a very beautiful structure in China, which makes me want to start all over again!
Un jardin en forêt de Darney 