Weddingland

On the shore 
And I will learn/
I will learn to love/
The skies/
I'm/
Under.

 - Hopeless Wanderer, Mumford & Sons

The picture is the scene at Brodyk Lake near Smoky Lake last Saturday afternoon, and under the sky on the black mat is Shelagh's nephew David waiting for his bride T.J., considering his great fortune, as the pair prepare, in front of their friends and family, to exchange wedding vows.

It was a spectacular setting, and we all felt we had stolen one from February. Indeed, only a few hours later the weather had transformed from mild to wild, as the sky greyed and the snow blew through. For better, for worse is the story of our connection to the weather here.

It wasn't the only nod to the land.

Designing women
There were ice-encased roses lining the path to the lake. The bride's bouquet had pine cones. The reception hall entranceway was flanked with potted birch trees in their budless, leafless February lack of glory. But glorious just the same. The table centrepieces featured candles floating above twigs sitting on a cut of birch log. And the exclamation mark, actually about 35 of them, were birch trunks set into place on an organza-strewn frame that served as the backdrop for the head table.

It was really neat. This wasn't an import-your-basic-out-of-season, out-of-territory flowers and plants. It was Alberta in Feb.

You couldn't miss the message: this is where we're from, this is who we are, and our love of this place is part of our love story.

Shelagh and Dave
Thanks to Dave and T.J., long live your Alberta sensibility, and good luck through all the weather ahead.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

:)

Image
One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve...
Read more

Hello!

Image
The potential socialness of a bicycle is built right into its roofless and windshieldless and doorless frame. It is easy to say hello on a bicycle. Like this morning. These sidewalkers nodded to me in unison at the exact instant I nodded to them. I said hello to the jogger, and he waved back. Hi, I said, to the dog walkers and the dog, and they nodded a greeting back. Both joggers smiled and said hello as our lives passed. I said hello to the squirrel. I said hello to the woman walking with poles and she returned the hello. The jogger looked over and I said hello as she said hello. I said hello to this fellow egg picker upper and we talked for a couple of minutes. Her bicycle comes out April 1. She is excited. Hello, I said. Hi, she said. I said hello to the  man on the other end of this leash and he said he and his dog were enjoying the beautiful morning. I said hello to this woman and she said hello, and we laughe...
Read more

Some Late Thoughts Listening To Wheat Kings

Image
Wheat Kings in Edmonton, July , 2016 I asked a friend at work what The Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings was about, and he paused for a beat longer than he would have had he not considered the same question many times. And then said: "I don't know." I took this as a good sign both of his humility and the song's profundity. It was an honest question. I don't know much about The Hip. They were cool for the first time when I was watching my wife raise our children, and trying to help the mission where I could. Those were busy days. The 1990s are my mediated decade, preserved by photographs of my younger self. Among the art that didn't get in was The Tragically Hip's. And it was a dishonest question. I knew the song was about David Milgaard's wrongful conviction and wrongful jail time served for the murder of Saskatoon nurse Gail Miller. And it was an honest question, because song's visual shards—that weathervane, a killer's face lit ...
Read more