This was
the fourth time I’ve painted at this great retreat, and I look forward to many
more.
The two
favorite ways for guests to arrive at Alderbrook Resort are by float plane, or
by yacht. We vendors take the third, least expensive option.
We boarded
a ferry in Seattle, then drove. The Kitsap Peninsula is shaped like the head of
a cuttlefish, cradled on the east by the arms and fingers of Puget Sound, and
on the west by the long, bent arm of Hood Canal. Some fifteen miles from Bremerton,
we reached the muddy tip of the broad Canal (technically a fjord), and tooled fifteen miles more past
the vacation homes that line its oyster caked beaches. It’s a woody, meandering
road, smelling of fir, cedar, and saltwater. The hundred year old Alderbrook is
suddenly there on the right.
You could
say this wedding was a marriage of blondes and beards. I got to paint plenty of
both. There were the two year old twin boys, dressed like the little Dutch boy
on the paint can, with blue pacifiers, who walked down the path bearing a sign
that read “Here Comes the Bride;” there were the blond, freckled flower girls,
in sparkly silver-grayish taupe summer dresses that easily accommodated their
spontaneous soccer playing, and their sparkly feathery pink flapper skull caps
pinned at a tilt. There were feathers in the flower arrangements too— the
bride’s family supplies hundreds of thousands of chicken eggs a day for the
region’s breakfast tables. I guess with that many chickens, you get feathers
everywhere.
The
well-whiskered groom, who’s family is in the boat business, turned out to be an
amiable conversationalist, as he stood for his portrait. His equally well
whiskered best man/brother stated in his toast that the groom could “talk to
anybody about anything— he could talk to you for half an hour about your belt
buckle.”
It was an
unhurried wedding, in an unhurried place. It feels like a vacation every time I paint here. You can bet I swam in the Canal before we left.
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