Rebekah and Alex contacted me to perform their wedding ceremony on a giant block of granite overlooking Route 4 in Killington.
They’d hiked up to this promontory on their very first date, and were now coming back up the trail with her brother Matt, his fiancee Grace, and me to solemnize their vows. Barefoot – I might add.
Still snow on the ground? Â No problem! Â As Matt put it, “She’s an Elf Princess. Â He’s the Marlboro Man. Â They don’t need shoes!”
We got to the top in about 30 minutes. Â It was a gorgeous, bright, breezy, early spring day. The kind of day which makes you believe anything is possible. Â A perfect day to get married. Â Alex and Rebekah kept climbing.
And decided they’d found the exact spot where they wanted to speak their vows.
We followed them up, and performed the ceremony. Grace had a surprise reading, a poem she said made her first believe in the power and possibility of love. Â It was the last part of “Little Gidding” from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Â Which, by the way, always makes me cry:
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
CallingWe shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Then there was champagne and toasting! 