Chapter 12: The Harvest Wedding on the Ridge
They were married on a warm Saturday in mid-October, on the high grassy meadow beside the timber workshop.
There were no velvet ropes. There were no imported white lilies, no four-hundred-dollar place settings, and no politicians calculating voting blocs in the front row.
The altar was framed by two ancient white oak trees blazing in gold and scarlet foliage, overlooking fifty miles of unbroken Appalachian wilderness.
Eighty neighbors—local sawyers, apprentice carpenters, hospital nurses, farmers, and children from the valley schools—sat on hand-hewn cedar benches beneath the cloudless blue sky.
Clara wore a simple, flowing ivory linen dress she had sewn herself, adorned with a wreath of wild mountain laurel and aster blossoms.
David stood beside her in a clean dark wool vest and white linen shirt, his face radiant with the unshakeable dignity of a man who had found his soul.
Dr. Robert Sterling and Nurse Martha Jenkins stood beside them as their witnesses, both of them beaming with unreserved, tearful pride.
When the local country pastor pronounced the blessing, the crowd erupted into joyful cheers that echoed off the sandstone bluffs as acoustic fiddles, banjos, and mandolins began to play a lively mountain reel.
Long timber tables were assembled on the meadow, groaning beneath platters of roasted squash, smoked mountain trout, fresh sourdough loaves, and warm apple pies baked in the outdoor brick ovens.
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They danced on the grass under the stars until midnight, celebrating a love that had walked through the valley of the shadow of death and emerged whole into the eternal light.
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