October 04 2008, 11:43 PM Four Mile

I took to my feet again, following the roads as they turned across the rises, a quick brisk walk to where the spine of my neighborhood runs along the river, down near the tail, to lean against a wooden fence and look down across the valley. I got there early. There were fifty or so of us there, by the fence; some brought chairs to sit on the slim flat spots above the wooded drop. A spotter plane circled. We took in the city, waiting for the start, looking down onto the dark waters and watching the tugboat with the coal barges furtively cast a spotlight out in front, waiting for the pool to clear: even in celebrating, the work goes on in this place.

They started more or less on time. We had no count; a moment of clear air over the lights of the city, and then fireworks began to erupt from the rivers, the park, the buildings themselves. The distance of them made the thunder of the thing soft and rumply, a low tide of rumble that rolled up the valley through the crisp air. The bursts and orbits and candles began brightly, sharp and star bright against the black sky, muting themselves as they left behind more and more smoke, becoming textured and softened but no less glorious. We chatted and watched, took pictures. Someone down the line said, Hey, we should sing and we did; a big handful of people on an anonymous ridge in the night, all standing against a wooden fence, singing Happy Birthday to Pittsburgh.

There was a finale, the last burst, and then the night came back in, the vast cloud of smoke still hanging lazy over the city lights, a reminder of other times, a proud history. We clutched our mugs of cocoa and coffee, waiting to see if it was really over. It was; the sky was quiet again. And more, too. Even after all of that, and returning to the simple skyline and the normal lines of office lights in their ladders marking the stories:

We have a beautiful city.