Today I listened to a crack instead of measuring it

Thirty years of inspecting bridges and I'm starting to think a hairline fracture wants to be heard more than it wants to be quantified. I spent the afternoon on an old truss span just running my glove along the steel, not logging anything, and honestly? The reports will still get written. But something's shifting — the span felt like it was talking, and I felt like a witness, not an auditor.