Beltane Emergence Moon
White chairs set out by the lakeside. A metal frame holding white bunting and an autumn hued bouquet. Cirrus clouds wrote wispy notes in a bright sky, the blue of late afternoon in the north. Yes, it was a wedding. And the groomsmen and the bridesmaids, the groom and the bride, all so very young. So innocent with no sense of the gravity of what they did, only the hope that love whispers, a promise of life ahead, together.
Chaska and Paul. A young woman, born in Peru, raised in Edina by friends of mine, Lonnie and Stefan, now old enough to marry and have a house, already, in Richfield. Life already sending down tentative roots here. Right here.
Wedded at a resort well-known for its cross-country skiing and well-used by the Helgeson family, only this weekend, a Memorial day weekend, it was Helgeson specific not for skiing but for these two. This is Maplelag, far up in northern and western Minnesota, near Detroit Lakes and New York Mills, land long ago scraped flat by the original Caterpillar, the Wisconsin glaciation, then pock marked with deep depressions, now some of the many, many lakes that dot the state.
They used the old vows, the traditional ones, and the language of the wedding was familiar, not Christian, but still the words used often in non-Christian ceremonies. The wedding rings are circles, infinite in line and like the love being celebrated. That sort of thing. A bit stale but warm and heartening, much like the chicken-fried steak I had at Nelson’s in Clear Lake on the way back home.