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61 Despite Gravity They come from France, Sweden, Mexico and Maine. Designers and engineers cradling blueprints and calculations in their arms; ironworkers wearing hard hats and steel-toed boots, sledgehammers grasped in the grip of their gloved hands. With scars and sweat drying on their skin, they come with memories of the sea and gorges sliced between mountains; rivers with forgotten names moving beneath them, time rushing overhead, and the knowledge of birds flowing in their blood. On a boat before dawn they cross the water. Starlight washes over them. The air is moist and cool. And they are silent. They are grateful for the silence. All day it stays with them, as they work at the edge of the sky. They come, because a bridge is like a dream of what is possible. It rises from the earth as if gravity was something imagined, and the forces of the universe were suspended. Workers take plywood and steel, construct a framework into the endless air, where cables holding a million pounds of iron and concrete are as elegant as the strings on a harp playing the sounds of wind rising off water. This page intentionally left blank ...

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