“If anything’s certain in life, it certainly isn’t the fate of the Callicoon bridge. The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) has plans to do . . . well, something, with the bridge that links Callicoon to Damascus, Pa.”

I wrote those words for this newspaper almost 18 years ago — 17 years and nine months ago to be more exact. 

I’d spent an evening at the Hortonville Firehouse, listening to a group of NYSDOT officials map out a half dozen different proposals for a project to fix the aged bridge, a project they said would begin in 2009. 

For those keeping track, 2009 was 15 years ago. 

At the time, officials said they try to get 50 years of life out of a bridge. Interstate Bridge 7 — as it’s officially known by the folks at NYSDOT — had been built in 1961, and as of 2006, it was already 45 years old. 

In the years since that planning meeting and the long-passed date for an overhaul, the span between Callicoon and Damascus has reached and blown past “nifty 50” and “sassy 60” to reach the ripe old age of 63. 

And now it’s finally happening. 

My colleague, Derek Kirk, shared with Democrat readers earlier this month that the bridge project will now officially begin in July of this year and extend through to November 2027. 

Spotting the headline, my mind immediately went tripping back nearly 18 years to that meeting in Hortonville and to that story, written for the paper when I was a, ahem, much younger reporter, a young mom with a toddler at home. 

And then, a second thought: It’s about darn time. 

That I recall that meeting in the Hortonville Firehouse so vividly is a bit surreal, not least because just this morning I couldn’t remember where I’d put my fresh set of socks before hopping in the shower.

But in many ways, it speaks to the thing I’ve loved most about being a community journalist. I can’t recall every single story I’ve written in the past 20-plus years, and sometimes I struggle to put names to faces that have changed since I photographed them 10, 15, 18 years ago. Sometimes it’s a long, long overdue update to an old story that forces the memories to the surface, like Derek’s did this June. 

Still, there’s a continuous thread that I carry, that ties me back to this community, to my community. 

Because if there is anything certain in life, it’s that the fate of our community lies in the hands of those who invest their time in carrying it forward.