This is becoming a thing! There we were, the regulars - me, Wendy and Mary enjoying a quiet afternoon of winter plein air painting at the Cochrane Ranch. We hear a group of people crunching along the snowy path. They stop on the bridge behind me. We are used to passers-by stopping for a look or a chat. I'm thinking they are talking about how beautiful our paintings are. I mean hey, could be, but we don't know - they're speaking Russian.
After a while it's just the sound of the Big Hill Creek bubbling along and a lone female voice that settle on the scene like fresh snow. The sudden quiet causes me to stop. I look up. Oh they are not looking at or talking about us. It's a small, plain-clothes wedding party and a dog. They circle around a young couple and a minister who carefully guides them through the vows that will bind them together from this day forth.
Like the previous wedding where the bride and groom came charging through our setup on the shores of Vermillion Lakes with their cameraman two summers ago, it is beautiful, other worldly; a divine moment into which we are inadvertently but not unwillingly drawn.
We stand quietly and take it all in. Incidental witnesses. My mind wonders off on its own and comes back with a line from Dylan Thomas' Fern Hill. Recounting his childhood he remembers what I imagine to be a similar scene when "…the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams…"
Anything can happen when you're out painting en plain air.
(I did get permission to take their picture)
