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| Wedding Tree Trail |
Seventeen years ago yesterday, December 31st, 2025, Jackie and I got married outdoors in the woods north of our house, in the company of several hardy friends.
The photo captured our joy, our smiling faces, our rosy cheeks, and our breath in suspension on that unique afternoon when our many friends dressed in various layers of down parkas, wool bibs, canvas coats and jackets, stocking caps, choppers (mittens), and warm insulated boots to attend our somewhat crazy outdoor wedding.
All but two of the guests dressed appropriately, having chosen to ignore the bold plea on the wedding invitation that said, “OUTDOOR WEDDING PLEASE DRESS ACCORDINGLY,” and so arrived wearing clothes only suitable for a traditional indoors church/hall wedding and an evening of exuberant dancing to a polka band. They were understandably optimistic as the day had started out at around eighteen below and had warmed up appreciably to minus five with a twenty-one below windchill. We found warm clothes for them to wear all the same.
The attendees walked a snow-packed trail across our yard and into the woods, to gather in a circle around us and a small blazing fire beneath a large oak tree. Lakota flute music could be heard on the high bank above Mikinaak Creek, something we think could have happened in this area because it is known the Dakota lived here hundreds of years ago. We incorporated a few practices of an Ojibwe tribal wedding in our secular wedding, and spoke our own vows of allegiance to one another wrapped in a Star quilt.
We seldom dance around a fire in the woods anymore, but I wouldn’t say the fire has gone out entirely after seventeen years. Truly, I can’t expect anyone who knows us well to not laugh out loud if I would write that, (although being married 17 years is a record for both of us), she and I lived happily ever after, but I do want to say with all sincerity that marrying Jacqueline Helms wasn’t the worst decision of my life either.
She didn’t believe me when I proposed to her as we walked back home from the mailbox a half mile away that December because I had long said I’d never marry again after a second failed marriage. I had maintained that attitude for roughly six years when out of nowhere that afternoon there was just something she did, be it some sweet facial expression or smile / sparkly eye thing, or little spring in her step that struck me so strongly that I laughed over it. Afterall, she wore a one-piece snowmobile suit and purple rabbit-fur lined bomber hat; and I, a black and red plaid Elmer Fudd hat with two sets of ear flaps, one of which tied together over the top, and a Carhartt canvas chore jacket. Weren’t we the pair? (Little did I know they would become our wedding clothes three weeks later.)
Asking Jackie to marry me that day was an impulsive decision, but not a new one for I had planned to pop the question once we arrived at the Minnesota State Fair in August that year with the Orlin Ostby family and their ox and cart during the Minnesota Sesquicentennial -- but, we got into an argument and I decided I maybe needed to think things over.
You see, Jackie and I had known one another since, like 1984, when we both attended Northland Community & Technical College in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. We had a romantic relationship that unfortunately ended suddenly, for reasons I won’t go into here. I contacted her immediately after 9-11 when things seemed like they were falling apart around us, and we might need one another. I had hoped to reconnect / re-ignite an old flame, and little did I know that the coals had been smouldering for years on her end, and all we needed was to breathe a little life into it.
We went to Ireland with the McDonnells in 2003; the years rolling by through THE RAVEN years when Jackie’s eleven year tenure as a graphic artist at The Times in Thief River from 1988 to 1999 paid off in spades and took our little journal into the world of high technology and color presentation. I couldn’t have done it on my own.
In turn, we shared one another’s families; her four adult children and, at the time, her five grand-children. I shared my daughter Bonny, a teenager at the time, who readily accepted Jackie as someone who tried her best to smooth the transitional change and effect of an amiable divorce between her mother and I. It worked out well.
In 2008, Jackie and I walked 250 miles out of 440 of the Pembina Trail beside a 2700 lb., Holstein ox named Pum who pulled a two-wheeled ox cart from Pembina North Dakota to St. Paul, Minnesota. We were dressed to resemble Metis ox cart drivers of the 1800s and the late Delmer Hagen, of Gatzke, MN, who recreated the walk in 1958 during the Minnesota Centennial. Participation in this project during the hottest months of July and August that year severely tested our compatibility, but we saw it through all the same; neither of us quit. It was quite a story.
So it was in 2008, I asked Jackie off-handedly,
“Will you marry me?” .
“Go on wit’ you!” She may have said. “You’re jokin’ with me and I won’t have it!”
“No, no, I’m serious now. Will you marry me?” I may have said, reiterating my sudden proposal.
“You said, you’d never get married again! Don’t be lyin’ to me now, you tosser!” she could’ve said, borrowing some Irish terminology from the past. “Are you tellin’ the truth? You askin’ me to really marry you? I’ll kick you in your bollocks if yer funnin’ me!”
Not wanting to risk damage to any part of my physical being, I may have repeated, “Fee-fon woman! Will you be marryin’ me or not? Or should I give it another think?”
“Well, okay, she probably said. “Let’s git ‘r done by the end of the year, if yer serious.”
She thought I’d back out ... I didn't. So here we are today, beginning our 18th year, perhaps a new record... ?
The photo captured our joy, our smiling faces, our rosy cheeks, and our breath in suspension on that unique afternoon when our many friends dressed in various layers of down parkas, wool bibs, canvas coats and jackets, stocking caps, choppers (mittens), and warm insulated boots to attend our somewhat crazy outdoor wedding.
All but two of the guests dressed appropriately, having chosen to ignore the bold plea on the wedding invitation that said, “OUTDOOR WEDDING PLEASE DRESS ACCORDINGLY,” and so arrived wearing clothes only suitable for a traditional indoors church/hall wedding and an evening of exuberant dancing to a polka band. They were understandably optimistic as the day had started out at around eighteen below and had warmed up appreciably to minus five with a twenty-one below windchill. We found warm clothes for them to wear all the same.
The attendees walked a snow-packed trail across our yard and into the woods, to gather in a circle around us and a small blazing fire beneath a large oak tree. Lakota flute music could be heard on the high bank above Mikinaak Creek, something we think could have happened in this area because it is known the Dakota lived here hundreds of years ago. We incorporated a few practices of an Ojibwe tribal wedding in our secular wedding, and spoke our own vows of allegiance to one another wrapped in a Star quilt.
We seldom dance around a fire in the woods anymore, but I wouldn’t say the fire has gone out entirely after seventeen years. Truly, I can’t expect anyone who knows us well to not laugh out loud if I would write that, (although being married 17 years is a record for both of us), she and I lived happily ever after, but I do want to say with all sincerity that marrying Jacqueline Helms wasn’t the worst decision of my life either.
She didn’t believe me when I proposed to her as we walked back home from the mailbox a half mile away that December because I had long said I’d never marry again after a second failed marriage. I had maintained that attitude for roughly six years when out of nowhere that afternoon there was just something she did, be it some sweet facial expression or smile / sparkly eye thing, or little spring in her step that struck me so strongly that I laughed over it. Afterall, she wore a one-piece snowmobile suit and purple rabbit-fur lined bomber hat; and I, a black and red plaid Elmer Fudd hat with two sets of ear flaps, one of which tied together over the top, and a Carhartt canvas chore jacket. Weren’t we the pair? (Little did I know they would become our wedding clothes three weeks later.)
Asking Jackie to marry me that day was an impulsive decision, but not a new one for I had planned to pop the question once we arrived at the Minnesota State Fair in August that year with the Orlin Ostby family and their ox and cart during the Minnesota Sesquicentennial -- but, we got into an argument and I decided I maybe needed to think things over.
You see, Jackie and I had known one another since, like 1984, when we both attended Northland Community & Technical College in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. We had a romantic relationship that unfortunately ended suddenly, for reasons I won’t go into here. I contacted her immediately after 9-11 when things seemed like they were falling apart around us, and we might need one another. I had hoped to reconnect / re-ignite an old flame, and little did I know that the coals had been smouldering for years on her end, and all we needed was to breathe a little life into it.
We went to Ireland with the McDonnells in 2003; the years rolling by through THE RAVEN years when Jackie’s eleven year tenure as a graphic artist at The Times in Thief River from 1988 to 1999 paid off in spades and took our little journal into the world of high technology and color presentation. I couldn’t have done it on my own.
In turn, we shared one another’s families; her four adult children and, at the time, her five grand-children. I shared my daughter Bonny, a teenager at the time, who readily accepted Jackie as someone who tried her best to smooth the transitional change and effect of an amiable divorce between her mother and I. It worked out well.
In 2008, Jackie and I walked 250 miles out of 440 of the Pembina Trail beside a 2700 lb., Holstein ox named Pum who pulled a two-wheeled ox cart from Pembina North Dakota to St. Paul, Minnesota. We were dressed to resemble Metis ox cart drivers of the 1800s and the late Delmer Hagen, of Gatzke, MN, who recreated the walk in 1958 during the Minnesota Centennial. Participation in this project during the hottest months of July and August that year severely tested our compatibility, but we saw it through all the same; neither of us quit. It was quite a story.
So it was in 2008, I asked Jackie off-handedly,
“Will you marry me?” .
“Go on wit’ you!” She may have said. “You’re jokin’ with me and I won’t have it!”
“No, no, I’m serious now. Will you marry me?” I may have said, reiterating my sudden proposal.
“You said, you’d never get married again! Don’t be lyin’ to me now, you tosser!” she could’ve said, borrowing some Irish terminology from the past. “Are you tellin’ the truth? You askin’ me to really marry you? I’ll kick you in your bollocks if yer funnin’ me!”
Not wanting to risk damage to any part of my physical being, I may have repeated, “Fee-fon woman! Will you be marryin’ me or not? Or should I give it another think?”
“Well, okay, she probably said. “Let’s git ‘r done by the end of the year, if yer serious.”
She thought I’d back out ... I didn't. So here we are today, beginning our 18th year, perhaps a new record... ?
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