First Anniversary!

It's been a year, and what a year!

On August 3, 2012 we climbed a hill in Scotland, under the ceiling of God's greatest cathedral, to commit ourselves to each other.

This blog is the story of our love and our wedding. Most people do not realize that the ministers of the sacrament of marriage are the spouses themselves. The spouses are the ministers of the sacrament of marriage because the mark—the external sign—of the sacrament is not the wedding ceremony or anything the priest/pastor might do, but the marriage contract itself. The "marriage contract" does not mean the wedding license that the couple receives from the state, but the vows that each spouse makes to the other. As long as each spouse intends to contract a true marriage, the sacrament is performed. The effect of the sacrament is an increase in sanctifying grace for the spouses, a participation in the divine life of God Himself.

In this way, sacramental marriage is more than a union of a man and a woman; it is, in fact, a type and symbol of the divine union between Christ, the Bridegroom, and His Church, the Bride. As married Christians, open to the creation of new life and committed to our mutual salvation, we participate not only in God's creative act but in the redemptive act of Christ.

This morning, a year later, we woke to the hungry stirring of our baby daughter Aisling Jane, in her bed at our feet.

The past year has been frequently challenging, sometimes boring, often rewarding, but definitely just another piece of our adventure together! So many blessings to enjoy and be thankful for.

Doug, Sandi, and Aisling at Paulina Lake in Oregon in late July, 2013

New blog for a new life!

We have an update! Please visit our new blog to follow our new adventure preparing for Baby!
http://www.likebegetslove.blogspot.com/

More Unexpected Publicity!

Well, it appears that our wedding-moon adventure was featured in the Scottish Wedding Directory! They had emailed me some time ago asking about our motivations for eloping in Scotland, but I never heard back from them when I replied so I didn't expect to see this! We're so flattered. Hopefully our photographer will help to get us copies!

Click here for a higher resolution image

Unexpected publicity

It appears that our adventure is inspiring the local folk around Glenelg and lower Skye, because a short news feature was written about our journey there! It's titled "Glenelg entices couple to travel 5136 miles for their wedding." It's probably more accurate to say that the Scottish Highlands enticed us, but who's going to be picky? We did love Glenelg!

Also, our photographer has published a short blog post about our special day, which includes some really special photos. Click here to see it!

Here is a sample:

A video from our photographer!

Soon we'll have the entire set of our wedding day images to share with you! Hurrah!

In the meantime, here is a little teaser.

The Longest Most Beautiful Day... part 2

Today we are climbing to the very top of this.

The second half of The Longest Most Beautiful Day was spent hill-walking the ancient glacial landslip called Quirang. Thank you to Doug's mom for sponsoring our hill-walking afternoon!

So, in the U.S. we have plenty of hills and mountains; when we walk them, we generally call it "hiking." Scottish hill-walking is similar, but not really the same, and it's difficult to explain why. American hills are hot and humid and tree-ful in the South, cool and rainy and tree-ful in the Pacific Northwest, more dry and mountainous and treacherous in the mid-West; and aridly Mediterranean-esque in California. 

These particular Scottish hills, while treelessly naked, are quite steep, peppered with sheep droppings, covered in moss, and strangely wet and boggy on top. The wetness runs across and down the hill, cutting under the vegetation and through the soil making deep and narrow trenches which are (as Sandi found) easy to fall into, up to your knees. There is also an aroma of peat in the air, which we recognized from our whiskey education: peat is the compacted remnants of plant matter that has accumulated for many years without decomposing, and it is dried and burned to dry the barley that is used to make Scotch whiskey. That's what gives Scotch its smoky flavour. Peat looks like good black fertile soil, but it smells sharp and pungent because of the acidity, which prevents the plant matter from decomposing. You can learn more about it here, but the point is, it was a strange new (though ancient!) scent in a perfectly natural wild world.

The views, as you can see, are simply spectacular, reminiscent (to us Americans) of landscape features in Utah and Northern Arizona, only with grass, and sheep, and strangely more German tourists per square mile than can be found anywhere in America (even the natives were remarking on the number of Germans, and so I thought I'd mention it here).

Huff...pufff...
And we're only halfway up the hill!

I should add that one reason this day was "the longest" was because the summer days are so very long so far North. It was generally light outside by 6AM and dark by about 11PM. On this day we came down for breakfast quite early (and much earlier than we were habitually awake while in Scotland) so that we could make it to Sea Kayaking by 9 AM; we had our faerie glen picnic at around 1:00 PM; we hill-walked from about 3 until 6:00 or 7 PM; and we still had several hours of daylight left to make it back to Portree, have dinner and whiskey, and watch a little bagpipe parade in preparation for the Scottish Highland Games, which we weren't able to see because we had to return the rental to Glasgow by a specific time the next day. We posted a little video of the bagpipes at the end of this blog entry for your enjoyment.

Here are a few more photos of the day!

We parked in the lot visible on the right... this photo is from a small foothill...of a foothill.

My best hill-walking pose!

Getting a bit higher... parking lot still on the right...
Where is Elizabeth Bennett?!?!
Oh yes, she lived much further South. But still...

At this point our breath was already taken by the climb, so the view was all but suffocating! But we survived.

This is the feature that we photographed from the parking lot, at the top of this blog entry.
It's like Utah, with slightly more grass...

Bagpipe parade in Portree!

The Longest Beautiful Day... Part 1

When last we left you, we were preparing for a tremendous day of excursions: sea kayaking, consorting (and picnicing!) with faeries, and hill-walking one of the most beautiful places on Skye. It turned out to be such a tremendous day that it wore us completely out, and then with all of the travelling back to Glasgow, terribly slow internet access, and general exhaustion, we just gave up on keeping our blog up to date. Admittedly, one reason we were so exhausted was because our room at the inn in Portree was directly above the bar and live-music area. Perhaps this is why it was so inexpensive... anyway, with loud music going until the wee hours, our sleep wasn't great, but we survived. And here we are again to share our adventure!

The loch where we kayaked!
We put in out of the picture to the right,
then paddled all the way across the bay and along
the shoreline to the outcropping in the foreground.

The longest beautiful day was the Tuesday of our second week. It started quite early in the morning (which our bodies still knew was the middle of the night at home) with Doug heading round the corner to the town grocer to pick up our picnic food for the day. We were to have more wine, cheese and meats with a Bordeaux that Doug bought in Glasgow! Then down for our overly-caloric Scottish breakfast (I'd given up and turned to just porridge and toast, but Doug faithfully ordered the full breakfast each morning. His beard makes him hungry.) And away we drove North, cross-country to Sea Kayaking!

Thank you to Alyce and Gayle, the Fee family, Jessica, Kristen, and Will & Lauren for sending us Sea Kayaking!!  It was a lovely day.

OK, so, the thing about sea kayaking is that...well, it's in the water. Our phones and camera are the sissy-afraid-of-water-kind, so we left them in the car for the actual kayaking, so that they wouldn't drown if we toppled over. Fortunately, neither Doug nor I toppled over, but one of our companions did, but all ended well.

Our arms are a bit tired, but our hearts are happy

Here's a hurried photo of our happy-and-tired faces following our sea kayaking adventure:

Our leader was named Patrick and we kayaked with one other couple, visiting from Ireland, named Collette and Kevin. Kevin is the one who toppled over, because he was mischievously trying to splash Collette. I had strictly forbidden Doug from mischief because I am a delicate flower, the sea was very very very cold, and I didn't have a change of underpants.

And here are a couple more photos overlooking the area of the loch where we kayaked:

We put in just beside that pier in the distance.

We paddled allllllll the way across the bay and then
along almost all of the shoreline visible in this photo.

Everywhere we went, when we met people, everyone was always surprised and enchanted to learn that two young Americans would come to Skye on their honeymoon...which is probably good for us, because it would be much less fun if ooey-gooey honeymooning couples were roaming around everywhere distracting attention from us. Heehee.

After kayaking, we popped into the car and drove just a few miles to Faerie Glen for our picnic. Thank you Gramma Barbara for sponsoring our picnic: we were hungry and weary and in need of rest and refreshment!

Can you see the faeries?!

Faerie Glen is essentially a very interesting little geological formation in the middle of an enormous sheep pasture:

It's called "Faerie Glen" in part because it is a miniature version of the true-life enormous hills and glens that cover northern Scotland. Every part of it is like a miniature version of the same geological features. It was precious.

 We found the perfect spot on the very top of one of the strange and perfectly conical hills, overlooking the rest of the site (and sheep!).

Our grocery-bought-but-nonetheless-yummy picnic!

Our wine was "sipped" from
the inn's coffee mugs as
we snarfed our picnic 

 It had a nice flat lawn on the top, close-cropped by the sheep's munching, and so we spread out the neat little tartan blanket that we'd borrowed from our Inn room and covered it with deliciousness. Then, in the warmth of the sun, a strange foggy haze overtook us, and we were softly lulled to sleep. 

Faeries??!! Perhaps. 

When we awoke from our faerie-and-wine-and-sunshine-(and possibly fatigue)-induced slumber, we put away our picnic and walked up to the very top of the highest outcrop of the Glen. And here is what we saw:

See the little faerie cars down there?!

Decades of sheep munching wore little paths round and
round the hills...

It's called faerie glen in part because it's a tiny little representation
of the enormous glens that cover Skye... the most spectacular
of which we visited later in the day.

 After exploring the glen thoroughly, we packed up the car and headed to the "real" hills. As many beautiful places as we'd been so far, we didn't fully appreciate just how breathtakingly beautiful the "landslip" called "Quirang" would be. It was quite literally breathtaking because we climbed all the way up it, hiked across it, and learnt exactly why the Scottish refer to "hillwalking" as a semi-extreme sport.

To be continued!

3 More Days of Wandering

Sorry for the huge back-log, we've had lots and lots of adventures and little time for documentation!

Doug, Sandi, Castle!

The day after our marriage, we visited the majestic castle of Eilean Donan.

Thank you Meredith and Dorothy for sponsoring our visit!!

Although only built in the twentieth century, it has long been used for a variety of different fortresses, and the tour mentioned how it was first a site of Celtic habitation, and later served as protection against the Vikings and later still as a spot for clan warfare.

After the castle, we went to a weaver's shop and ordered a scarf in Doug's family tartan and a blanket in the tartan of the family who controlled the land on which we got married to comm. Sandi also got a wool bag that she is immensely fond of.

We left our Bed and Breakfast at Dornie on Sunday to continue onward to the island of Skye proper. Our first destination was a metal-smith/jeweler who does Celtic designs. The drive was wonderful, but the jewelry itself was very expensive and a bit underwhelming, so we continued on toward Portree. We stopped at a gas station for the essentials--$80 worth of petrol, fruit, knock-off candy jelly babies and homemade candy called "tablet." The jelly babies just were not the same that you can get in the city, so that was a disappointment (Thank you Jessica for introducing me to the wonder that is Jelly Babies!), but we discovered the overwhelming wonder and brilliance and height of culinary excellence that is tablet. Basically, tablet is non-chewy caramel that has the texture a bit like flaky sugar cubes. Like caramel, it is basically just heavy cream and sugar, but so so wonderful.

Our place in the little harbor town of Portree is an absolutely fabulous British inn. There is a bar downstairs where they serve food and have live music, and our room is upstairs. (Thank you Jim and Lynn and Nancy!) After getting settled, our adventure continued in climbing to the Old Man of Storr.

This is what the Old Man of Storr is supposed to look like:

This is how it looked for us:

Doug, Sandi, and the Foggy "Old Man" of Storr

But we were more than happy with the mist, and although we lost out on some of the views, it was the first time we really felt truly cool and coast-like on our whole trip, so that was quite welcome. We got back and toured Portree for a bit. It is full of tiny little shops and is quite cozy and snug. We ended the night back to our inn for some Olympics (in real time!), some local beer, and live music.







The next morning, we continued our walking tour by hitting a series of falls in the Cuillins. Too sleepy and tired for actual rock-climbing, we got ourselves overwhelmed in a very wide and lonesome glen:

Thank you Doug's Mom!

Then on to the highlight of our day: the Talisker Distillery!

Our tour guide Allister was a very theatrical and natural story-telling Scot and told us how the whiskey was made, including the part where it soaks in giant barrels made from Douglas Fir trees from Oregon! Apparently, only Oregonian Doug Firs are large enough, straight enough and tasty enough for the Talisker Whiskey. Doug felt quite proud that his trees were there and were making something yummy. He also felt quite home-y. Which is very important for him. Mostly because we were unable to get onto the tasting tour, so we had to settle for the normal tour instead. To compensate, we bought a tasting pack in addition to our standard bottle. Thank you, Grandma!

Then back to Portree for some brie and bacon and red wine vinegar onion chutney sandwiches and more drinks and live music. And rest for tomorrow's adventures!

Here is a video of some of the music in our pub.

Wedding Day Adventure!

Conchra House

We came home early today with the explicit mission to update our blog.

First off, thank you so much to Doug's cousins Renee and Bob, and Sandi's friends Chris and Carrie and Brandy and Jeremy for sponsoring our three-night stay at the Conchra House! Three nights in an incredibly silent old farm cottage (a large old house with slow internet access but hey, some people love to get 'off the grid') on a one-lane road facing Loch Long.

We really should begin where we left off... our wedding day!

Blushing bride...

Our most special of days began in the most special of ways: exchanging our vows in a very private ceremony in a high field overlooking Loch Long, the tiny town of Dornie, and the Eilean Donan Castle in the distance.

Proud groom...

We posted our vows in a separate blog entry. They are so very personal and special to us. Our relationship has always been very much about quiet and intimate friendship, long talks to explore one another's perspectives, each challenging the other to grow, and adventuring! We are very much looking forward to a lifetime of the same.

What a view...

We each feel more at home in the "church of the landscape" where God's work is in evidence everywhere, and we decided that this would be the ideal location.

Up the hill!

And it was.

We returned to Conchra House to rest (it was quite a strenuous climb "up the aisle" to our field) and spruce up a bit for our photo shoot (I splashed mud on my dress in the final 10 yards of hill tromping!), which we expected to take most of the afternoon.

The view down the hill from the place we were wed.

Getting into the car!

The one-lane country road

Then into the car for a drive along a tiny one-lane country road (with frequent "passing places" to make way for infrequent oncoming traffic) to the Glenelg Ferry where we waited for a few minutes to meet Rosie Woodhouse, our photographer, who lived across the loch from the first set of locations.

The ferry stop was little more than a car ramp down into the loch with a tiny lighthouse next to the parking area, where coffee and snacks were available for sale on the honor system of payment. It was adorable.

Rosie is a delightful personality, which is so helpful for cultivating the right mood. A little bit o' peaty whisky was also an aid... She directed us to many stops throughout the afternoon, so we got quite a nice tour of the area all round Dornie, including some of the ancient dwellings. We were a very popular sight with the locals all afternoon: I guess it's not every day that a bride in a white dress is scampering about the beaches, cliffs, roadside sheds, fields, and ancient brochs, groom and flowers in tow... hopefully we will have more photos to post soon!

We had not eaten all day, but we were apparently high on love (and whiskey!). Around 4 o'clock Rosie left us for a few minutes at a tiny little restaurant in Breakish called Red Skye Restaurant while she popped home to look for some wellies (big rubber mud boots) for me to wear in the possibly wet and muddy field for the next shoot. Rosie told us that this was a fairly new restaurant, and as we sat and waited for her return, we looked at the menu and realized that this was not a simple fish & chips establishment! They were so kind as to ply us with tea and water, and let us use their toilets, which was... a relief.

We decided to order our dinner here, to pick up later after our shoot was over and return to our room to eat. When we returned to pick up our food after our shoot, they gave it to us on real plates, with real silverware, wrapped in a bit of tin foil to stay warm, and trusted us to bring it all back to them! Doug had venison with red currant sauce and I had roast lamb over a bed of mashed potatoes cooked in a lovely way. Both came with sides of the sweetest and most flavourful veggies! Perhaps it was hunger, perhaps it was love, perhaps it was the mead that we drank with it, but this was the most delicious wedding dinner we could imagine. And yes, we returned our cutlery and dishes on our way up to Portree on Skye.

There is so much more that we could say about this day... we wish we had taken more candid photos and videos along the way to share with you, but we were just so happy and focused on each other and the incredibly beautiful day, that we just forgot. But hopefully we'll make up for it!

Thank you for being a part of our adventure!!

Adventurers!

We are so sorry that we've been woefully slow to update our blog! Our last B&B had very slow internet and we were only home in the late evenings, and so we haven't been as able to post as we'd like. We just arrived at our new Inn, the Isles Inn at Portree, and they seem to have much better wi-fi. We are off now for a hillwalk after a quick lunch, and we can't wait to share more later!


Also, we'll post more photos soon, our photographer had another wedding yesterday and it takes time to process all the photos she took!

Our vows

We tried to write our vows independently, but without structure, we struggled to get anything down on paper. I ended up with a list of non-sequiturs, while Sandi had a set of very interpersonal exchanges. Since these conceptualizations of vows are not directly compatible, we sought elsewhere to give some form and structure to the promises we were about to make.

After some extensive discussions and internet-searching, we decided to model our vows loosely on an aspect of the Hindu marriage ceremony called <i>saptapadi</i>, or “seven steps (lit. feet).” (cognate to the Latinate construction septa-pod). Loosely, the seven steps are the following vows:

1. Maintenance of self
2. Maintenance of the relationship
3. Development of self
4. Development of the relationship
5. Trueness to one's self
6. Trueness to the relationship
7. Demonstrating this love to others

Here are the vows that we gave each other:

Sandi. So that I may fulfill these remaining vows, I first pledge to care for my own body, mind, and spirit, which have through God's grace recognized you, my second self and best earthly companion. In your heart's purpose I see reflections of my soul's most hidden places, in your words I hear echoes of my heart's sincerest joys.

Doug. I promise you the endless joys and sufferings of life-long labor, a constant endeavor to maintain whole my self, to become for you a true and worthy companion, my life a steady pillar for the security and growth of our family.

Sandi. I take your mind, body, and spirit to be my husband, and the head of our home. I will continue to seek and accept your loving leadership, your friendship, your companionship, and your faithfulness. I pray that I may forever forgive and forbear your human flaws, and that you may do the same for my own.

Doug. I promise you a life of two souls in rendezvous, the tiny infinite meetings of two hearts in touches and glances, two bodies in quiet solitary holds and honest comforting arms, two minds in exploration and mutual discovery. I promise to turn away the fleeting and harbor the eternal, husbanding the sacred forests of our love.

Sandi. I promise to contribute spiritually to creating our home and life together. Our home will nourish our mutual love, trust, creativity, and prosperity, and serve as a haven for our family's mutual safety and retreat from the world.

Doug. I promise you the eternal motion of my soul, treading always the divine path, remaining fully alive. I promise to bring myself to mindfulness, and, growing in appreciation for the beauty of the world, seeing God in all things.

Sandi. My heart will forever be open to you fully. I will desire, respect, and aid your own spiritual, mental, and physical health and development through my patience and participation with you in all things: our differences create an expressive harmony; your love is my freedom and relief.

Doug. I promise to carry in my being the true voice pouring from your soul, listening and coming each day to understand better your heart, striving to discover its depths and nuances, parsing its themes and grasping in its rhythm the full beauty of life and creation.

Sandi. To fortify the bond between us, I promise to maintain my personal integrity and independence of thought and will, that they may strengthen and sustain our growth as one body and mind, with the sacrificial expression of Christ's love for His church as the model. By your love, my soul will find its fullest expression.

Doug. I promise you the beginning and end of my true self: my journeys, my trials, my heart. I promise you my elegies and entrust in you my pride, my anger, my weaknesses, as we work towards the transformation of my self into the pure essence of our love.

Sandi. I will be faithful to you in body, thought, and soul. I am yours, forever, and I take you to be mine. Circumstance can wield no greater power than the bond of our love.

Doug. I promise to hold you steady, hand in hand, passing as one through the varied and twisted valleys of our life. I promise you the brightness of heartstrings binding fast our souls, my true and constant guide, the sole and final destination for all my earthly comfort and joy.

Sandi. Through the fulfillment of the vows we make to each other - our marriage - I pray that the true representation of the mind, spirit and actions of Christ - love - be held up to the world, and that by God's grace and the Holy Spirit we are motivated together to have compassion for all humankind, as long as we both live.

Doug. I promise you a love clear and pure, brighter than stars, a guiding constellation and reflection of God's love. I promise to set it high and bring all those we meet to more clearly see its light.

Married!

We got married! It's late, and we've had such a busy day. We have had quite a few pictures taken by our lovely photographer Rosie Woodhouse, but will take a while to get them returned to us. In the meantime, here is a preview:



We'll write more as soon as we can!

Traveling Day

Not much excitement today as we spent nearly all day trying to get a car to rent and driving all the way up the coast to Dornie, where we will be married tomorrow! Since we are mostly just preparing for tomorrow, some pictures:

Doug! Wrong side of the road! What are you doing?! Ahhhh!

 

Mountains!

Some church with a fantastic graveyard on the side of the road:

Sandi in front of our loch:

 

Finally made it to our Bed and Breakfast! (Courtesy of Renee and Bob, Brandy and Jeremy, and Chris and Carrie... Thanks everyone!)

 

Also, we finally tried haggis. Yuck.

Picnics will be all of our beginnings.

Sandi has already described how our first date included a wonderful picnic and was one of the first experiences that brought us together, and now our newest beginning has one too. (Thank you Puett family!)

Tonight's dinner was cheese from the cheese-shop, hand-formed sourdough from the baker, cured meats and local berries from the corner market. We found some ginger wine at a liquor store that looked like an apothecary. All giant glass casks from which our liquor was poured into littler glass jars with stoppers for us to take home. We mixed our single-malt scotch into it and it was all earthy smoke and sharp sweet ginger kick. The memory of our first date accentuated every bite of the same kind of incredible, complex poignant food that brought us together in medley of sharp swirling flavors and a light alcoholic haze.

We started our day early with an incredibly full Scottish breakfast and then a few more recovering jet-lagged sleeps until we were ready for the next part of our adventure.

We went to the Glasgow Botanic Gardens and saw rooms after rooms of rare and tropical plants that couldn't survive this rainy and frosty clime (Thank you Smith Family!!).

On our way down the river to our next location, we ran into some vintage clothing shops and Sandi found a florist who knew our photographer in Skye, and Sandi commissioned the wedding flowers. I don't know the details, but there was something about wild grasses to go with the dress. Meanwhile, I found a wine shop and picked out a Bordeaux and a Burgundy to fortify ourselves for the rest of our trip. After shopping we continued our journey down to the Kelvingrove museum, which was basically a quaint and local version of the New York Metropolitan and Natural History museums. The highlights were the Viking-era artifacts, a particular obsession for Doug. Our breakfast was enormous, so we were satisfied with a simple fennel salad and potato, leek, and chorizo soup for lunch. (The Scots apparently really, really like chorizo.)
 

On our way home, we took the main trendy West-End street where we carefully selected all of the necessary ingredients for our most wonderful late-night picnic. We also wandered into a music shop that blew my mind. The recommended section was incredible. The Decemberists, Iron and Wine, Neutral Milk Hotel, and the list just goes on. And it was all just right there. Just out in the open. Wondrous.

After a bit of catching up on news and sleep, we had our picnic while listening Doug's portable stereo and the beat of rain outside our window. We decided that Scotland was perfect compromise on the weather... Sandi has rain but oppressive heat in Tennessee, and while Doug is cool in San Francisco, he simply does not have enough rain to truly flourish as the Oregonian he is. So we ended up in a place perfectly cool and rainy, and smile at all of the people we meet here who dream of get-aways in Miami or Spain.