For this year’s Global Earth Exchange, two friends and I went to a place of tragic beauty. It is a bridge that spans Thurston Avenue on the Cornell University Campus in Ithaca, New York and the gorge far below, one of several carved out by glaciers in this area. At the eastern end of the gorge the frothy waters of Triphammer Falls tumble down cascading steps in the cliff before spreading out over the silver-gray bedrock. Since 1990 twenty-seven students have taken their own lives by jumping from this and other bridges here.

My friend, Lauren Chambliss, who teaches writing and communications at Cornell, wanted to honor these students by doing a Global Earth Exchange at the bridge.

This was not a “wounded place” like an open-cut coal mine, an insect-infested forest, or many of the other kinds of places where RadJoy members usually go for this annual event. Nor was it currently beautiful, but imminently endangered, like a natural area marked for development. It was strikingly beautiful, but the very features that make it beautiful—its dramatic height, its hard, rocky bottom—were the ones a desperately suffering person would seek out if they were determined to end their life.

Participating were Lauren, our friend from New York City, Rev. Liz Maxwell, and me. Before we went onto the bridge, we sat for a while at a picnic table in the shade, talking about the despair that so many young people face as they confront a present threatened by school shootings and a future drastically challenged by climate change and an ever-tighter job market. Lauren shared that, after one of her students committed suicide last spring, she devoted a whole class to making space for the students to open up about their feelings.

Then we walked onto the bridge. As offerings, Lauren had brought wildflowers and a beautiful stone and a piece of wood. Looking over the side of the bridge, where authorities have now installed nets to prevent further suicides, we talked about the majesty of the natural area and the absolute certainty that anyone who came here with the intent to die would succeed. We created a gift of beauty for the place and the people with the rock, stick, a few flowers, and RadJoy flags. Finally, we tossed most of the flowers over the bridge, making prayers to today’s youth that they can find life-sustaining beauty even in their despair, and to the loved ones of those who have died, that they might be healed.

We left the gift of beauty, including the flags, on the bridge. Lauren said later that she saw a young man standing contemplatively before it. He recognized the significance and was taking it in.

Read the other stories of this year’s Global Earth Exchange on our website.

If you did a Global Earth Exchange this year, please tell us about it by filling out this form. The Earth needs all the beauty it can get!

—Trebbe Johnson