¡Colores!; 802; Spanning the High Desert: New Mexico’s Historic Highway Bridges; Interview with Rina Swentzell, Voiceover 2

On the real Brandy, from Sam, being a Sam at the Fair. So then the river itself becomes a significant boundary and kind of people's perception of home territory. Marks out your home area as well to one side of the river to the next. One could feel that that was now home and where your home community extended to. And then something I hadn't thought of, you know, if you're talking about how powerful and dangerous the river could be in the spring. Of course at the time when people needed to be planning crops, that would then mean the village would be limited to fields on the side of the river where the village was from. Yes, the fields were always, the fields we irrigated were always on the side of the, on the village side of the river. Because it was too hard to process, of course, too dangerous to pass in the springtime.

And it was used for irrigating as well. There were ditches that came off of the river and that water, of course, was used for irrigating. And when people take the drinking water from the ditch or go down to the river or... No, they took it from the stream coming from the mountain. Well, Santa Clara. It was less muddy. Are any old stories and mythology you can think of about people on journeys and coming to rivers and crossing and anything that you haven't shared with us that comes to mind? People on paths or journeys? There are many trails. The part of the river that I'm familiar with is up north and of course there are trails all up and down one side of the river. I can only guess that the river really was a way to orient oneself and to know where the rest of the land forms were relationship to the river.

I always found it interesting that the people didn't have river vessels of any sort. I've never even heard a raft going down the river. It was just something that needed to be treated with such respect that you didn't need to do that. It was almost out of one's thinking to think about putting any vessels in that river. I was taken by something you just said about the role of the river and orient yourself. Is that something you could elaborate on? Two things that occurred to me as you were saying. One is the whole idea of not only your relation to the river but relation to upriver downriver and then also the position of the river and the cardinal landscape.

I think the position of the river and the cardinal landscape is probably one of the more important things because we make such a big thing of north, south, east and west. Of course the real grandi happens to just be running from north to south in a very clear way and that becomes one of the ways to have that whole cardinal system. That was so important for our orientation and for the containment of the world, the snake that runs right through the middle of the world and going from north to south. The myths and stories telling us how movement really does happen from north to south that their emergence happened in the north and then we moved south like the river moves south. It's almost a universal movement that the river is doing.

I want you to say it again assuming a person who doesn't know any of the stuff about the cardinal landscape and briefly sketching what that is because I understood perfectly what you're saying and you know the kind of mentioning whatever you want to the cardinal mountains, the containers, the river flowing, just give me another version of what you just said. The structuring or the order of the world, as always, we always have to start at the center and the center place of course is where the village is, where the symbolic opening into the underworld is. But then it's also and then we get back into the notion of simultaneity where there are also other openings around and the landscape and one of the primary ones being at the center of the pueblo, but around that center then we get a very distinct sense of direction from that center, the north, south, most and with. And what that does knowing, knowing where those four points are, what that does is it gives containment because at those points are the mountains also that are acknowledges as part of the part of that cardinal directional system.

Those mountains as they are identified in the four directions create a center place, create a valley place and it's within that valley place that the people lived and then again we're back to how the world is gendered in the table world. Everything is male or female and we talked about the water being a male force. The mountains are male forces and then of course we've got the female valley place that the mountains give a sense of containment to and it has to be in that valley place where the people live and that gives a real sense of containment of being within a place that one can feel a sense of belonging but also a sense of responsibility for. And we talked earlier about areas around Santa Clara that we felt in a way we belonged to but the but San Otifonso three miles away from us belong to another definition of place and it wasn't just the far mountains that did it was also the hills around but also the river and how the river.

And how the river moves through that place really helps to define what is what place we belong to and what place we're responsible for. How about you know that old bridge there? I don't know what to use. What do you think of that person and what do people say about that? Because I guess when you would have been it was replaced in 48 first so you would have been pretty young when it was still when it was the functioning bridge. When the suspension bridge was still functioning. It's funny that one of the things that would happen though is that my father who enjoyed fishing so much would take us into that area sometimes and I remember as a child crossing over that bridge and it was always a place of amazement.

When cars were coming through it was a place of amazement. You know just cars were amazing but then to get bridges that would that would go across the river. I think people were still in amazement. People were still in amazement about the capability of those other people to build something to go all the way across the river. It's really a real you know something that that is when you stop and think about it is still quite amazing. When we were people even when I was growing up traveled by foot for the most part and then all of a sudden the cars and bridges they could go across the river and then one didn't have to be aware of the force of the river.

One could ride over it and just sort of not have the river affect you as a power anymore. It makes it at least it makes it possible to start to ignore it. I particularly like you know what you know kind of you know I remember my father kind of tell it as a little story with the beginning. My father was a great fisherman. He loved to go fishing wherever and one of the places he liked to go fishing was along the bridge along the island bridge. And we were able to go with him even the girls and it was just one of the most beautiful places in my memory because they have wonderful sandbags there.

And I think it's still until recently was even enjoyed by many many different different people going there. But we could never get in the water. We were always on the shore and we weren't ever allowed to go into the river. What about your memories of physically crossing the bridge you know and I guess someone you've mentioned vehicles but then also the fact that it was a suspension bridge did it actually flex and did you have a feeling that it was somehow kind of alive? It certainly moved and it was and I remember the sensation of it being of feeling real dizzy as one walked over it because they were both the motions. You were aware of both the water motion and the bridge motion at the same time making you make you feel the whole world was moving and in the flux. And again could you give it to me with you know something I remember crossing the bridge and give me something that gives me a beginning.

No that's you know I mean if you don't mind me. No I don't. One of the things I remember was crossing the bridge with my brothers and sisters and there were so many of us. We'd be running across but they sometimes stop in the middle of it you feel the movement of the bridge because the bridge would move and then we'd be very aware of the movement of the water underneath and the two of them would make the whole make the world. Oh if you sensation the movement in the world that I didn't know anywhere else. What about the new bridge? Have you even noticed it there? I mean it kind of blends in but it's a reinforced concrete bridge. It's designed right into that four lane road and whereas the old road used to kind of gather itself up the bridge was run across and the road came around from one side. You have to make a definite turn to get around and get on.

Well the new bridge you know there's a wonderful quality of flowingness about it where you just the highway just keeps going it's like a line that doesn't break and the speed of the car allows you to really feel that swooping and you turn your head and see the water for a moment underneath you and then it's gone. And it's a bare moment of acknowledgement that there's a river under us with the old bridge. You were prepared to come up to it because you had to make the sharp turn and then to go across it you had all of the structure around you on the side of you and you knew that you were doing something very unusual that this was a moment an unusual moment that was happening crossing over the river with the new bridge that it takes away that feeling of something being out of the ordinary. That humans have made it such that the river is not acknowledged for the power that it has or that the river is a very special thing and that you acknowledge it as a special thing

by slowing down even before you can go across it instead of swooping across it with not a moment of waiting or anything. I think a lot of people can cross it and not even realize that it comes to a river. I mean if their eyes are on the road they just it disappears. They've gone over without knowing it. My mother-in-law who lived in Santa Fe and had a nursing job up in Los Alamos and they used to take buses. Their joke was about the bridge that if they put one more coat of paint on it, one more coat of paint on the bus it couldn't get over. It was pretty tight. Later on when that bridge was when the new bridge was put in and then people could just walk across on the old bridge,

there were times when the planks of wood had rotted away and we'd usually be going for a hike down on the its side of the river to where the petrol gloves are. And you'd have to be very careful where you were stepping because there would be gaps of three or four feet. Gaps of three or four feet wide in the bridge itself. Really exciting though to be here. There's something that I'm also hearing in what you're saying and if it makes sense to you again if you can pull it together. That's the whole idea of what you said about preblows kind of respecting the river, not having rafts or canoes or vessels to go on and kind of taking it as a given versus the modern industrial engineering sensibility of doing whatever necessary to overcome it.

The way we've talked about how the sequence of bridges kind of becomes more and more distance from the river. Is there anything that you would want to say about a difference in attitude between those two two different ways of viewing the bridge or I'm sorry, viewing the river. Or maybe with the bridge as a manifestation of it, although not necessarily. I think the very, very different views that poor little people have of the river comes from their point of world view. The really felt that forces, natural forces like the water, like the wind were more to be honored and respected.

They were to use maybe Christian terminology, they were what gave life to the world. They were so incredible in their significance that they could not even build rafts or small boats that would go on them because that would be a way of trying to be more than the water is. It was the thing for poor little people to do was to really feel the significance and take it for what it was without trying to make it come into human realm. It was the place of the people to come into the world of the river and not the river to come into the world of the human.

I think a very incredible difference that happens. And when the river is brought into the human realm, then you can build bridges over it, then you can flip through it in a second without feeling its presence. But if the presence of the river is the primary thing, the presence of the wind is the primary thing, then you can't even conceive of doing the other. I know you've thought a lot about historic preservation as a cultural value. What do you think of the preservation of the auto-ed bridge given that it's in its place in your childhood memories? Do you think that's a good idea?

You know, historic preservation has such multiple meanings and poses such different problems even at different times. I feel that for the most part, things should be left to go with time and that time is a very important factor in our lives that we don't acknowledge. As the river, time has to be acknowledged as much as the river is. I was actually disappointed when the holes in the bottom of the bridge through which we could see the water when the planks were rotting away. And there was a real danger to our lives because we could have fallen through as we were walking with kids or whatever. But then one day when we went there and it was all re-planked again and there was no danger anymore, that took away some of the significance.