You are Here - Fly Fishing Around the World - USA
Peter Cammann, The Streamside Guide
Crossing Over
2nd June 2008
Vermonters are lucky. Because we see them almost everywhere, we can take covered bridges for granted. I remember sitting in the Capitol Theatre in Montpelier in 1995 and wondering why Clint Eastwood's character in The Bridges of Madison County, Robert Kincaid, felt that photographing covered bridges in Iowa was of such importance to the readers of National Geographic, or to anyone else for that matter.
Hell, there are three covered bridges on Cox Brook Road at Northfield Falls! Eastwood could have shot his whole roll of film there, grabbed a sandwich at the country store and been on his way, thereby avoiding ruining the life of Meryl Streep's unfortunate character, Francesca Johnson.
For a couple of years, I wrote a weekly column on fishing for a newspaper. It was a pleasant gig, given that the publisher basically let me write about anything that sprang into my head. The offices of Vermont Journal were located right on the banks of the Mad River in Waitsfield. Right around the corner, just in view of the office if you wander to the back of the building, is the covered bridge that crosses the Mad. Eastwood might have just dropped by there for a half hour instead and taken a sure-fire Pulitzer Prize winner of the bridge and the beautiful white church steeple in the background. That would have made his editor happy enough. He also might have even observed a few other things that National Geographic subscribers don't see every day.
In May of each year, the State Fish and Wildlife department dumps a portion of a truckload of rainbow trout into the Mad River, right at the covered bridge in Waitsfield. For much of the spring and summer, lots of kids (and plenty of adults) scurry under the bridge to cast for the hatchery fish. Some folks take them home to fry up for dinner while others toss them back, in the hope that the small trout will learn enough to survive the cold winter.
Someone once told me that while the Mad wasn't the best trout stream in the world, it was undeniably the best trout stream in the Mad River Valley. That's a comforting thought in this one-river town. I can't recall ever catching a holdover trout at the Waitsfield covered bridge, but I still dream that someday it might happen. There will be a tug on my line and I'll fight a valiant one-pound rainbow whose color is brilliant and whose attitude is thoroughly wild. I know that it's unlikely. But that's okay. I still fish at the covered bridge a few times every year…just in case.
Like most covered bridges, the one in Waitsfield is only wide enough to allow one car at a time through. For over one hundred years, folks have lined up just to the right of the entrance to the bridge and waited to see if there was anyone on the other side looking to cross. If there was, whoever realized he was there at the entrance second would signal (with headlights, once the automobile made its appearance in the Valley) that it was the other guy's turn to use the bridge. I recall that sometimes this turned into a comical Alphonse and Gaston ritual with two cars flashing their lights at each other until one finally headed across while both parties chuckled. But no matter what happened, the person who got over to the other side always waved at the car waiting at the front of the line heading the other way. That car wouldn't start to move either until the salute had been returned.
Every once in a while, an out-of-towner who didn't know the rules would barge through, closely following the rear bumper of the car in front of him, without regard to the folks waiting patiently on the other side. Or sometimes a resident was running so late that he just felt the need to do the same. These breaches of etiquette were frowned upon, unless the miscreant at least acknowledged the folks waiting with an apologetic wave.
A little civility went a long way.
One day, a pair of red STOP signs sprouted at either end of the bridge. Too many impatient people in too big a hurry had crossed over without waiting and so there was a danger that folks might get hurt.
The STOP signs do make crossing the covered bridge more orderly. For the most part, folks don't rush through behind the car in front of them too much anymore. The traffic runs a little quicker and that's cut down on delays during the big holiday weekends.
But the thing that I like is that almost everybody still waves to the car that's there to meet them when they reach the other side and that wave is almost always answered. The trout living under the covered bridge may not care much about all of this, but it seems like the people in their cars up top still feel the need to acknowledge one another.
