Leaves, not Rings

A wedding took place here this past weekend, several miles north and to the east of this exact spot. Seventy people with smiles and fifth drinks’ in their hands danced for hours in celebration of two people proclaiming love and faith in the challenge of marriage. These trees, however, seem to need nothing so organized as matrimony to celebrate.
The groom grew up here, the wife moving up after college from Virginia. They live in Burlington, the be-laked college town, two hours away from the festivity, the largest city in the state. The couple created the ceremony themselves out of speeches from family and friends, refusing traditional views and exchanges and embracing the solidity of declaratives and self-direction. The scripted scene fell way to the party soon after, their guests exhilarating in the freedom of friendship and the surety that they will always fall in love and there will always be more weddings to reunited at.
Visitors to the Northeast Kingdom fall in love themselves with the quaint bridges, the rainbow of leaves, and the rural life that manages to capture all of the east coast charm without its hurry or judgmental downfalls. They move up to a cheap few acres of land, and stay through three winters and leave, or else they never leave at all. The roads are often dirt and winding, the cabins often lack electricity. All houses have fifteen square foot cubes of cut firewood to fuel their stoves for their winter’s warmth.
The views from the highway expand over marbled hills of rust and pumpkin forests and sheep-cleared pastures, and on past to the outlines of purple piles of upright trees. Speed limits jump back and forth from freeway to local-lane numbers, and arrows show the way on sidewalk signs to the local chiropractor, the dentist’s office, the mail room and the county clerk’s office. Every other barn has fallen down. Every other shop sends their blacksmithed metalwork, their creamed cheese, and their oat cookies down south to bakeries and kitsch shops where there are enough people who buy things that the artist can buy the salt to save his venison in the freezer.
Life here is certainly measured by the seasons, predictable and prepared as the snows come, the ice appears in the morning, the melt arrives and the mud flows in. Every shift in light necessitates a certain amount of fire wood, particular chains on the tires, several inches of boots or x layers of sweaters. Whatever freedom one feels from the distance from population and power lines can be stifled by the sheer planning necessary to survive when it may be a week before you can clear your way to the grocery store an hour away. Sturdiness must be measured in patience and introversion, success by the winters worn.
Yet it is this regularity that ensures when the smells of the long winter start to arrive, and the trees start falling prey to axes, the forests expend their extra energy in a great drunken dance of their own. Their familiarity with the length of fidelity necessary to survive nakedness through February inspires such a celebration that entire vacation packages are designed around the voyeurism of city dwelling visitors. What would we have done if a handful of paying suburbanites decided to watch the wedding party? That would be weird, but honestly we would probably have ignored them, or handed them a drink so they could come dance to Twist and Shout too.
What is it that we find fascinating about this chaos of nature? It is as if it is not permitted, it is a bit scandalous, it is three sheets to the wind. Nature is the responsible, constant, nurturing element, and we – well, we are the ones making choices for no other reason than the fun of it. But perhaps nature needs to rid itself of this foolish energy as well, and has made her choices to be bright and startling in the face of the tremendous sobriety needed in the marriage of winter.