2018 Retrospect: Monochrome Studies

Directionless
Santa Barbara CA

Obsession
Salvation Mountain, CA

Citadel
Griffith Park, Los Angeles

Rush
San Clemente CA

Gravity
Wilkeson WA

The end
Whiskey Creek WA

Wedding, Summer Solstice 1986

Today is Saturday, June 21, 2014. It is Summer Solstice. Twenty-eight years ago, Summer Solstice also fell on Saturday, June 21. We felt it was an auspicious day of the year to get married.

All photos by best bud Herb Payton. Thanks, padre.

First we led our small crew of witnesses across Puget Sound and around the top of the Olympic Peninsula to the deep fiord of Lake Crescent, and then through the woods to our chosen spot.

No fancy church for us.

I'd written a suitably idiosyncratic, humorous, and marginally poetic service, and we'd hired a local judge to do the honors. (She is now a State Supreme Court Justice.)

There was something meaningful about letting balloons loose across the lake, but I'm not sure what.

The parental units (mine bookending the group, Robin's mom and step-dad to the center right). Everyone was looking different directions because there were three photographers!

There was also something symbolic about finding a snakeskin in the grass -- old lives left behind, I reckon --  not to mention the deer who wandered by to watch the proceedings.

Live noodling by the talented brother-in-law in the sumptuous old lodge. The bartender was named Lloyd, like the one in "The Shining."

Cutting the custom cake (in a "Miami-Vice"color scheme, with abstract "New Wave" marzipan shapes and plastic bride and groom in hand-painted psychedelic dress). Plus PeeWee Herman-ish palm-tree vegetables as table decorations.

Pleased with ourselves.

Whew, that's over.

For more wedding content from the past, check out this week's Sepia Saturday.

Something There Is...

...that does not love a fence, to paraphrase Robert Frost. Here are three paths (of varying upkeep) in my neighborhood that one must go to a certain length to access. The last one is so popular as to have engendered a full-blown "path of desire."

The Birches

A little red and green for the holiday season.

Near Grayland WA 

Land of the Free

Evidence of residence in forgotten corners. The homeless aren't just holding begging signs at freeway offramps.

Shed in the woods with Old Glory, Newcastle

Sleeping under the stars near Lake Bellevue

Abandoned campsite with pink sandals, Renton