This is the story of The Man and the Bridge, retold from the Land Owner’s perspective.
There once lived, in another time, in another world, an wise and wealthy Land Owner. To be both wise and wealthy is in itself an accomplishment, but it is not what the Land Owner had become known for. It was his land – and those who lived in it – that had made this Landowner infamous.
His land was a Good Land – full of the sweetest water, the ripest fruit and the largest vegetables anyone had ever seen or tasted. Even more incredible, his land made all who lived there so healthy that they soon stopped aging. The Land Owner was Ageless as well – and in fact it was from him that the Good Land caught it.
He had bought the land a hundred years ago now. It was a dry island then – not able at the first to produce a single grapevine, and only the deepest dug-wells giving any water at all. But the Landowner, in his wisdom, soon turned that around. He had brought with him special seed and special tools for digging, and in the first few years, the land began to burst forth with new life. The Landowner invested himself in the Land and it’s people so much so that he could not leave them now. They needed him. And this often made him sad.
You see, there were still other lands about – in fact, many of them across the water from this Good Land. They were poor, Dry lands still. The people there, he knew, were aging, and dying. They were trading youth without imagination for age without wisdom. They knew of no other way – but many of them hoped for one.
The Landowner had a huge workshop at his house, and in that workshop he kept everything that was needed to build a great bridge. There were stones of every kind, even great beams of wood and steel and things the people on his land had never seen – things only he knew about. A bridge could be built to reach the Dry Lands, but he could not build it. To finish it would take more than himself though, and it would mean his leaving the Good Land for a time, which he could not do. He needed someone else to volunteer for this job. And so he waited.
He waited for years and years, until now, 100 years in, an Ageless man finally came to him. He rarely had visitors, so he welcomed him and gave him some of the finest food and drink he’d ever had. Over dinner, the Ageless man told the Land Owner he had met an Old Man who had come from a Dry Land by raft. He told him how the wrinkles in his face were so deep and his eyes so darkened with age, and how his heart went out to him. He told of all the people aging and dying in that Dry Land, and how the only way to help them would be to build a bridge, so they could come here and share in this Good Land.
The Land Owner was very pleased.
He didn’t let on about how long he’d be waiting, or how many hours he’d spent planning the structure of such a bridge. He didn’t let on about how long he’d been collecting materials from around the world and storing them in his workshop. He only told that Ageless man that if he would work with all his might – just go and start – the job could be done.
And so the Ageless man began to build – not knowing much about his task. And just as the Land Owner had known, other people began to see the work and join in, and that Bridge was soon completed.
He looked out towards the shore and saw the Ageless Man running back across the bridge into the good land, carrying a little Old Man. Behind them came many more people, young and old, man and woman.
They all came and lived in the Good Land.
Nothing pleased the Land Owner more than seeing young people becoming wise, and old people playing again. Full of new life, the Good Land had become more beautiful than ever.