Over the rainbow

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops."
- E.Y. Harburg

One week from today, we will be set free.

We’ll escape this Kansas heat … this bone-dry, 106-degree weather that sucks moisture like a desert, that forces us into our homes as surely as Colorado fires push owners out of theirs.

“The past three-month stretch is the driest April-June here since 1911,” reported our newspaper, dryly.

Even the dogs stay inside for the cool, though they sometimes burn with cabin fever.

But in seven days we’ll depart from Kansas City's airport, its tarmac baking, shimmering, and land in the refreshing, cool dampness of the Northwest.

The contrast will be bliss. 

Even more so given what’s ahead.  For we travel, at last, to celebrate the wedding.

For us parents, it started with The Call, when this dad misbehaved as Eric phoned to seek our permission.  It continued with wondrous visits to Bellingham … sure, to do wedding planning, but also to embrace the richness of tall trees, deep-green trails and blue seas.

And that’s the incredible thing about the wedding that Meghan and Eric have planned.  While we’ll celebrate the unification of these two, we’ll also celebrate the natural world that has so captured their hearts and imaginations.

These two geologists want it that way.  They’ve studied what lies beneath and what towers above in this Oz called Washington.  They know its secret places, its beautiful spaces.  And they want to share.

And so their 16-page wedding invitation – a green-clad book illustrated by Meghan – included hiking tips for out-of-towners.  The wedding itself will occur partway up Mount Baker, in a hidden clearing guarded by goliath trees and thick ferns. The reception fare will sample the bounty of Washington’s fields, seas and vineyards.

All things considered, the bill for this bliss is coming in at less than I expected. The credit goes to Meghan and Eric. But that’s such a crass thought right now that I’m ashamed I brought it up.  I have but one daughter.  You work and save for this day because … well, you just do. 

To paraphrase Tina Turner:  What’s love got to do with it? 

Everything.

Meghan is back in Bellingham now.  She escaped the hot grip of Houston, Texas, where she’d been working as an intern. It didn’t take the pair long to reconnect with the land.  They and friends ventured off on a four-day hike along the peninsula beach southwest of Bellingham. 

It was a successful trip full of sea breezes, encounters with starfish and, of course, rocks upon rocks to analyze.  Their souls are restored.  Meghan reports today that it’s cool and misty in Bellingham; my phone concurs: “61 degrees, fog.”

Meanwhile, we suffer the heat in silence.  Sure, we and the dogs venture out for brief visits with our outdoors.  But we tumble back in when the panting gets too heavy, the slobber too thick.

During the night, though … well, that’s different.  Because then I can dream of the deep  forests to come.  I can taste the cool, damp air. 

And, in the distance, I can hear the soft exchange of two companions confirming a love as big as their beloved Mount Baker.

“I do.”