Among those celebrating the official opening of High Bridge were men and women participating in Crossroads' Recovery Walk to the namesake and literal highlight of High Bridge Trail State Park.

Crossroads Community Services sponsored the June 26 Recovery Walk for area residents receiving vital psychological rehabilitation care through its Town House program.

The Recovery Walkers caught the attention of the park's manager Eric Hougland and Joe Elton, Director of Virginia's State Parks, during their remarks on that august occasion. Crossroads Community Services has been “a big supporter” and user of High Bridge Trail State Park. Town House participants, along with Crossroad's executive director Will Rogers, had walked from the River Road parking lot to the bridge for the dedication ceremony.

“The group in attendance with the special t-shirts commemorating today's event,” Mr. Hougland noted, “are special users to our park.” And Mr. Elton said the Town House group, which regularly walks the trail, has “become daily users and stewards of the trail.”

There is great symbolism in striding toward and then crossing a bridge. Participants in the Town House program are crossing their own particular bridge in life, a daily recovery walk wherever their steps may find them. We all have our personal, private bridges that require us to cross them. And sometimes re-cross them as we undertake our own periodic recovery walks through life's difficulties.

For those in Crossroads' Town House program, their recovery walk was no bridge too far but, instead, to a bridge that can and will be crossed. From one side of their lives to the next.

And not alone.

-JKW-