2:00 pm
Today is a deliciously cold, gray day. I am curled up on the porch futon, tucked under the red plaid throw. The chiminea glows white around the edges with its little apple wood fire, the wood just fresh enough to release delicate fragrance as it burns. Occasional sparks spit onto the slate floor and sizzle before dying to ash.
Most of the weeds around the house gardens are pulled, chopped, and turning to compost. Yesterday, I gathered fat rose hips and made two batches of jam, not too sweet. I set the little jars in the kitchen window, eight of them, to catch the light, like stained glass.
My muscles are tired, and I'm ready for a long sit, so I'll tell a little more about the wedding.
Noah is anxious I not forget, since the fete occurred in a village so far away, where customs might differ from ours.
"We need to build more of a sense of connection with the other villages, Rose," he admonished. "It is too easy to settle into our comfortable lives here and pretend the rest of the world hardly exists."
It was that sense of connecting that was so amazing about the wedding. There we were, people from villages far and wide. Not so many people, but enough to tax the ten apartments in the guest house at Jasper. Packer and Balboa are well loved.
What amazed me was how easily we settled in with each other during our week together.
Chey, Ruby, and I, of course, stayed with Balboa and her fathers. We had a lot of catching up to do. And oh my goodness, you should have seen Ruby with Beryl's father!
Ruby had flown in the week before to help Balboa and Packer find just the right greens and flowers to decorate the hall. (I'm sure she wore the grandchildren out, traipsing over the hills like a mad woman, exclaiming over every unfamiliar variety of shrub and tree.)
Turns out Rocky, Beryl's dad, (did I mention his wife, June, died a few years after Beryl and Ronnie moved up to Jasper?) is a gardener extraordinaire himself. His knowledge of native plants and animals is legendary far beyond Jasper.
By the time we arrived, he and Ruby were pattering around arm in arm, laughing giddily at odd bits of conversation, and twitching and twittering at the least provocation. You would have thought they were the bride and groom.
No one was surprised when Ruby extended her stay after the wedding. She said she needed to learn more about the flora and fauna in the North Country.
I hope I haven't lost my mom to Jasper, along with my daughter, but I have to say I smile every time I think of my big-boned, no-nonsense mama acting like some kind of addle-pated, heart-thumping teenager.
Why is it I cannot stay focused on the wedding? We had a whirlwind week of people pitching in to decorate the bride and groom's new home, and cooking dinners for each other, sharing recipes and exotic foods. I sampled a wild currant and gooseberry pie that I wouldn't mind having another piece of right now, tart and fresh.
On the second day, Balboa, Packer, Ronnie and I hiked for hours up a rugged ravine to a narrow waterfall that pours directly from a glacier high on the mountain. We cupped our hands and leaned into the stream, sucking the icy cold water directly from our palms, delicious and teeth-numbing. I of course was completely soaked afterwards, but the hot September sun soon dried my hair and tunic.
Wild geraniums were still blooming in the underbrush on the edge of the forest. We found and ate a few bland thimbleberries direct from the vines. I like their cousin raspberries so much more. I did try a couple of huckleberries, but they were not quite ripe and made my mouth pucker. It's too cold now for them. The fruit sets on, but does not get enough warm hours in the day to ripen. Too bad. We don't have huckleberries at home, and they are delicious.
Packer lived up to his name and girth and carried each of us, one at a time, across the rushing mountain stream on his broad back. We climbed a little further, next to the stream, above the first waterfall, and across a golden meadow full of mariposa lilies. There the stream meandered gently. Deer nibbled at the tender plants under the heavier grasses.
Across the meadow, and round a huge outcrop of granite, we heard the upper falls before we saw them--two high ribbons, one far above the other, glistening water cascading down a sharp escarpment.
There we picnicked and Packer told of his childhood growing up in these mountains. His father and mother both loved the wilderness more than company and built their cabin at the edge of a meadow similar to this one, he said, where game was plentiful and the soil and sun rich enough to grow a few herbs and vegetables during the short summer season.
He told of an early winter storm that caught his father unaware, and how he had taken shelter in a cave, so exhausted and blinded by snow that he didn't realize until he woke hours later that he was sharing space with a sleeping bear.
Packer is wonderful young man. It is clear he loves Balboa dearly, and she him. They've been together too long to have that moon-eyed look of new lovers. There is a sense of intimate awareness each of the other, an awareness that is neither invasive nor demanding.
Balboa lazed on her elbows in the sun, her head thrown back, listening to the trill of a meadowlark. Packer, who had just cleared our picnic and tucked it neatly away in the backpack he had carried, rubbed the back of his neck slightly, turning his head side to side as one does to loosen a crick.
Balboa's eyes were closed at the time, but she must have known somehow that Packer was uncomfortable, for she rose languidly, rubbed her hands together as if to heat them a bit, and laid them gently on Packer's neck, just where he had been kneading a knot moments before.
While she massaged Packer's neck, Balboa answered the meadowlark's call, and did it so well, the meadowlark sang back to her.
"Packer taught me," she smiled, and trilled the call again.
