At the Cathedral of the Pines
It’s been raining buckets all day, but that doesn’t mask that you’re standing in the first gasp of Autumn. The trees here in Rindge started a cautious turn last week, but by the weekend they’ve rallied deep into it.
People say New Englanders talk about the fall too often, but all the trees on this mountain have conspired to spill a full-week sunset across the forest. There’s a reason Frost and Walden wrote here.
It’s the same reason Qathy and James picked today, up here, discarding decorations in favor of nature’s own. Up here, in the Cathedral of the Pines, this is New Hampshire distilled to its purest form.
As Abbie and Colin walk to the front with their instruments, the sky ebbs from a drizzle to a mist. Umbrellas fold down, spirits perk up.
It was like this was all part of the show. You know that if any bride were to get the clouds on her side, it would be this one, this girl who grew up playing witch in the woodlands.
To the plucking of two guitars, James walks down the aisle first, a birch pale suit and a parent on each arm. He looks over the mountains where the sun is considering poking through.
Then come the six bride-folk and six groom-folk, arm in arm, dresses and jumpsuits and bowties matching oaks and maples and poplars on either side of the aisle. You see a grin on every mouth.
Patrick comes next, a six foot tall ring bearer, and he carries a pillow donned with Percies sewn by Qathy’s grandmother. Maggie made her first Percy when Qathy was six years old, sewing wing and horn to a stuffed kitten until it matched the wilds of a granddaughter’s imagination.
Two Percies sit atop the pillow today, one silver, one copper, wedding rings on each creature’s horn.
Because what is a wedding without the whimsy that made you? Her childhood best friend carries her childhood imaginary friends, and if that’s not what magic is about, you don’t know what is.
And with magic in mind, you notice that the sky has cleared enough to make the only proof of today’s downpour the warm smell of earth after rain.
Ellie comes next, a two foot tall flower girl, trotting after Patrick with the confidence of seven cats. She is a sugar-crystal child, a wisp of blonde hair in a white lace headband and frock. She’s a dandelion seed in this forest. She begins with a conservative sprinkle of autumn leaves from her basket, then transitions to handfuls.
And then Qathy.
The woman with a laugh like bells. She’s a perfect amalgamation of the parents on either side of her: the wild curls tamed into a bun, the broad smile, the bright eyes. She walks from the cathedral to the forest, a white dress, a cream jacket, an ivory veil soft and delicate as spiderweb.
At her throat is a fifteen-spiked pendant of the sun, the same one the woman on her arm wore when she married the man on her other. Two generations of hearts full of light.
And when she steps into the aisle, the sky matches the pendant at her throat.
