It's Not Just a Bridge

Musings on OPR and the Portal Network

Operation Portal Recon

Little Free Library, Little Free Library, Memorial Bench, Little Free Library, Little Fee Library. I think the last one is something new, or a typo. All lower case, all low effort. This is what I went to bed reviewing last night. Hooray! OPR is back!

Woke up to a dozen rejected portals that I submitted. A sculpture, a clock, a bridge.

Maybe I just don’t know what I am doing here. Let’s look around…I see a Kohls department store, as unique as the other 1137 locations in the US. I see a couple of Starbucks, A Chic Fillet, and I had to FIGHT to have the road median made locally famous for being hit by cars taken down.

They made a road median a portal.

Long ago, in a galaxy far away

Several times a year while growing up we visited the Indiana Dunes. We lived less than an hour away, just across the state border in Illinois; it always seemed so far away. With a clutch full of kids in the back of a station wagon, the effort of loading everyone and everything that was needed to be away from the house for a day made these journeys seem like a migration to another land.

There was no scanner, and there were not portals, but there were landmarks along the way. As kids we don't always have the best sense of time and distance, but you remembered where the huge mug was. Where the cool building with the solar panels was, that old fashioned train station. When you saw the big rock by the beach you know you'd be seeing the bird watching tower soon, and that beautiful old pavilion building.

I lived in Chicago Heights growing up, so as soon as I came of age I made a beeline for the Dunes. I had known all my life that this region is not just where I wanted to be, it was where I needed to be. I moved to Chesterton some 25 years ago, where I still reside. Vindicated that I am in the right place by the loving wife who has been always at my side, the home we bought together that feels like we have always lived here, and by our ever always growing family of cats.

I was barely 21 years old when I moved out this way. I had no car, and a terrible job. This community isn't exactly the cheapest place to live in the region, but I was decided. I was going to make it work. Your focus determines your reality. I live here. I shared a very small apartment with my brother, his wife and their child. My room was essentially a sofa in a hallway. I was not afforded a lot of privacy, and not having a car or really any money I did what I could for entertainment.

I Went For a Lot of Walks

One particular day I set off down the railroad tracks. Our region is rife with rail traffic, so we can talk about my lack of safety later, but the tracks seemed to lead to no man's land, at least as far as a twenty something year old willing to trespass was concerned. On that day I really needed to clear my head, so I meandered quite a while before coming to a point where the nearby wood seemed to be the thickest. The was a lure, a pull. I am a woodsie dude, the pull that way was more than just wanting to see more trees.

Cutting across the tall grassy prairie I forged my way into the forest. I was immediately greeted by what looked to be a sort of well maintained type of trail. I didn't know if I was going to encounter a "NO TRESSPASSIN" sign or something similar. I had just moved to Indiana from Illinois so I wondered if I should be listening for banjos. Always the curious sort I decided to follow the path.

I liked those woods that day as I love them today. I have since traveled quite a bit. My feet have found themselves at march in a myriad of odd places. There are some places where it would seem that the road literally rises to meet your feet; these trails welcomed me. I walked along a then unknown riverbed until I came upon an overlook. There it was, the Bridge Over the Little Calumet.

There used to be a small bench on the small overlook, now gone as they have long since redirected the trail. Sitting on the bench I spied carvings, Futhark runes. It was a name and a date, May 1st. The word "Beltane" in runic. It was today's date, I had apparently just missed this other strange person that traffics in things like old symbols. I carved my name, and the date in runes as well, and continued down the path. The trail of course ended up being a forest preserve. Over the river and through the woods I came to the parking lot of the place.

The Bridge Became the Spot

After walking the wrong way home for quite some time, I eventually got back to my apartment and told my brother what I had found. The very next day we went on a hike and explored, then the weekend after that. Then we involved friends and other family on our hikes. Bailly Homestead became the backyard I didn't have.

When my wife and I started dating we were really broke, so walks to the woods were always a thing. The bridge became a beacon of sorts. In the many years we'd walked away sorrows, and celebrated joys. We talked of troubles, and of loss, and of all the things our hearts couldn't bear and needed walking off. We walked and talked about the joys that brought us to tears, hand in hand among the oaks. We celebrated life with a foot on a path that rose to meet us, on the way to cross over an old friend.

Finding a respite in the NW Indiana forest, we're not the only ones. Folks from all over come to visit our woods. They walk our trails and find wonder in the same subtle beauty that has held my heart in fascination all these years. That bridge has seen first crushes and first kisses. Both tears of joy and tears of sorrow have fallen across the guard rail on occasions far too many to be numbered . Traveled over by elder doggos, who have four feet to remember the way, muscle memory remembrances of the puppy that learned the path.

Pass the old Beech, carved with hearts and names of lovers from long ago. Walk the whole way to the cemetery, where these regional settlers are laid to rest. Try to resist the urge to tell visitors that they are baby graves not flower boxes. Life flows along the trail. I am a part of life. Everyone who walks the path gives of themselves. And the path gives back.

I didn't find Ingress Because I was Looking for a Game

The bridge was far from the first or last place that I felt a certain pull to. There have been dozens of places that I had encountered that I wanted to make a map of. I started just keeping a Google doc with GPS coordinates and pictures, but it was hard to share. I called these places "Nexus," of course not having the term Portal yet. I started trying to mark them on Google, still have some early maps saved, but again hard to share. I got as far as marking one such "Nexus" on Facebook, before they changed the criteria.

It was a few years later that I came to Ingress, and another year or so before I fell in love with OPR. Portal recon, edits, everything about the creation and maintenance of the portal network is my jam. Helping to create the world we game in is a kind of responsibility that I jump at the chance to rise up to. It was winter when I got to the level requirement. Hate of wet feet made me wait, but as soon as I could traverse the seasonal quagmire that is the Little Calumet Trail, I headed out and with high hopes and higher expectations nominated the bridge as a portal.

Rejected.

Just a bridge. Okay motherfuckers. It is NOT just a bridge.

Friends, it was right here and then that I decided if I thought it was a portal it is a portal. I will not just let it go. I don't do OPR for the badge, I do it to put portals where they are. Yep, I am one of those weirdos. I appealed and resubmitted until the bridge became a portal. Since I have set on the work of ensuring the whole Homestead looks like the stars in the sky. As a weirdo that really cares, I ask every one of you that undertakes the noble task of reviewing OPR: Have a heart about it, feel. To you it might just be a playground. It might be an unremarkable clock, or a painted electric box, but it might be so much more to someone. It might be so much more to someone else someday.

And when you submit, please remember that we are building upon a world that we all enjoy. Show us the places that inspire you. Let it be art, let it be beauty, let it have meaning. Our planet needs art and beauty so much more than we ever have. It should be duty of every Agent to showcase the best that we created to adorn our temple, our home, this Earth.

We do this and Ingress is not a game. It is life. See you out there.