Golden Gate Death

Once the welcome beacon for the West Coast, the Golden Gate Bridge is among my favorite places. I'll never forget the first time I went. Like most days there, it was foggy, cold and windy, even though it was a June day. You smell the ocean - the salty air, that fresh fish smell that only comes from the Pacific. You see the dark expanse of black water just past the bridge, outside of the bay, and in the deep ocean, and you begin to feel smaller than anyone else on earth.

Your mind drifts to seafaring. What a hard life it must be, to be clothed in waterproof windbreakers that do very little to shield you from the biting wind. How weathered your skin becomes after exposure to such conditions.

Yet you feel alive somehow, that air that is so filled with smells of nature and purpose fills your lungs and gives you energy and intensity. You realize that the fisherman from Hemingway were incredibly strong and massively powerful. This ocean is home to some of the largest, ferocious creatures on the planet, and those sailors drift amongst them daily. Their lot in life was in part determined by heritage, but in many ways it was impossible to deny. A life of adventure, battling nature and forces powerful beyond your control, will create Gods instead of men.

This bridge crosses that divide. The bay opens to cities of prosperity, built upon immigrant dreams. No one here is fortunate enough to be a native. The natives haven't been here that long, you see. Only several hundred years ago, Inuits, Russians, Spaniards, Mexicans and ragtaggled goldminers fought for settler's rights on these waters. Teeming with fish of all brands and colors, this land was worth it.

The fog covered mountains surrounding the bridge remind one of photos of Japan or China, before industry built its cement monoliths. Dark and light interspersed: the trees framed by the mist. Even now that the modern age has fully developed these peninsulas, much of the landscape is still covered in the dark, almost black of the leaves.

The bridge is immense. You can only barely see the Marin shores from your perch on the southern side. In this feeling of fulfillment you have derived - the intense smells, the romantic mists, the choppy, beautiful cold water, you realize you just may be on the precipice of life. The divide, if it does exist. To dive in, as your body screams from every pore to do, is a venture into an unknown chasm. You would not survive. Few have.

The beauty is tempting. And that temptation seeps into your consciousness like your first line of coke. It will always reside there. You know it will ebb in times of sadness, and remain just underneath the surface of you. Your life may spin in directions of happiness instead of despair, but that glimpse of the beautiful, deadly place is not something you can release. The memory will sustain through joy and laughter.

You may not make the choice. But the choice will always be there.

The San Francisco Chronicle is publishing a week long segment about The Golden Gate Bridge suicides, entitled "Lethal Beauty". The incredible sadness part of this place is overwhelming, but a very necessary part of our understanding of the locale. It reminds me of the yin and yang. You cannot have enormous beauty without incredible ugliness.

Read the Lethal Beauty segments at http://sfgate.com/lethalbeauty/. Complete with charts, graphs and anecdotes about the incredible number of suicides that are forever linked to the bridge.