When I say the words "Hogback Mountain Wedding" in my head, I hear a 12-string guitar, banjo and fiddle combo playing some old Americana tune. That’s what you should imagine as you read the following account of our weekend trip to a wedding in rural Maine.
I thought about calling this post “Kamikaze Wedding Weekend” because of the non-stop travel itinerary the husband and I undertook in order to attend our friends' wedding. But that reflects only our half of the story, the part where we travel relentlessly, almost continuously, in planes and automobiles, over a period of 48 hours.
We left home on Friday at 5:45 a.m. (driven to the airport by our very kind neighbor), flew from Minneapolis to Philadelphia, waited two hours and flew from Philadelphia to Boston where we picked up a rental car. We got on the road at 3:30 p.m. and proceeded to sit in traffic for an hour with everyone else trying to leave the city on a Friday afternoon. We broke out of traffic at around 4:30 and buzzed up through Massachusetts and New Hampshire into Maine. We were trying to make a 5:30 groom’s dinner at “Young’s Lobster Pound” in Belfast Maine (cue the music… the Lobster Pound is a big hall with tables where you can pick out your lobster, they cook it for you, and you supply the rest of your own meal.) But at 5:30 we had just crossed into Maine and were still about 2.5 hours away from Belfast, so we would definitely be missing the dinner. At about 7:00 p.m. a thick misty rain/fog set in and we discovered that the windshield wipers on the rental car were crap. But we were buoyed by being so close to Augusta and our turn-off from the interstate, so we carried on in good spirits. We ended up navigating our way to the house where the bridal party was enjoying post-dinner drinks via a cell phone conversation with one of the bridesmaids who was a childhood friend of the bride. It was dark and rainy, the roads were unlit, and the sparse landmarks to get us to the house were completely invisible because of the fog. Winding our way through the darkened town of Liberty, I felt like we might bump into Ichabod Crane on horseback just down the next hill or twist in the narrow road.
We got to the house by 8:30 p.m., having traveled more than 13 hours to get there. The husband was ever my patient hero, being the only man amid a dozen or so drunk women reminiscing about college parties and bad dates. His alternative was to have joined the groom’s party who were spending the night at a motorcycle bar and motel in Portland, so I think he was happier out in the woods with the women folk. We eventually went back to the local bridesmaid’s house for a full night’s sleep and the next morning began the wedding day activities. Our first stop was to visit the bridal party once more, and amazingly we were able to get in a short paddle at about 10:00 that morning since they were staying right on a lake.
a canoe ride powered by kayak paddle
We then left the bridal party to help set up the reception tent at the bride’s parents’ house.
decorating the dinner tent
We went over to the ceremony site at about 2:00 p.m., and the ceremony happened at some point after that. Everyone migrated to the bride's parents’ place for the reception dinner, and that’s where we stayed until about 12:30 a.m. when the husband and I got back in the rental car and drove back to Boston for our 6:30 a.m. flight. We got to the rental car office at about 4:30 a.m. and were bussed to our terminal for check-in before 5:00. We slept on the floor at our gate until it was time to board the plane, slept on and off during the flight to Philly, on the floor at our gate there, and on and off during the flight back to Minneapolis. We landed at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday and my father-in-law picked us up at the airport and gave us a ride home. We were tired and beat. We ate lunch, slept, got up to make dinner, and then went to bed again at around 10:00 p.m. Thus concludes the travel part of the story, which in itself helped reassure us that we can still live the rock n’ roll lifestyle of traveling, partying and staying up all night when necessary.
But the real story is the wedding itself. I did grow up in New England, it's true, but that was in the urban Boston area, quite different from rural Maine. Our friends the bride and groom, whom we met when we served together in the Peace Corps, grew up there in Liberty and in Montville, and having now experienced where they come from I have a more complete appreciation for who they are. It seems that growing up in rural Maine is quite good preparation for volunteer service in a developing country.
Similar to what the Ghanaians would call “Africa time,” the time of the wedding ceremony was told to us as “around 2’ish.” And true enough, the wedding guests began arriving around 2’ish, and continued arriving over the next half hour or so. The ceremony was held outside in a small open grove on Frye Mountain. We gathered and socialized for a while, and when the wedding party appeared, some music started up. The crowd sang the shaker tune ‘Simple Gifts’ to usher them in and a short, sweet exchange of vows written by the bride and groom followed. A reception crowd formed immediately afterward through which the bride and groom milled and greeted their friends and family. The mother of the bride began corralling different combinations of family members for photos. No one seemed to be technically in charge of the operation, and groups seemed to just flow in and out of photo poses, but it all got done in the end. The wedding party then climbed into a cart to be pulled by mules back to the reception on Hogback Mountain.
the bride and groom with the bride's parents
the bridesmaids mirror the fall foliage
wedding party RULES! When I got the bride’s parent’s address to enter into Google maps for driving directions, the street address was on Hogback Mountain Road. During Peace Corps, the bride often told stories of her parents’ mountain back in Maine, but I always thought it was an exaggeration, a way of describing the landscape where she grew up. When I plugged their address into Google, it couldn’t find the location. I zoomed out a level and only typed in the name of the town, Montville ME, and then it came back with directions to Hogback Mountain Rd. It seemed like the whole town of Montville centered on her parents' address - maybe they really did own a mountain! Luckily, on the day of the wedding we were able to follow someone else up to the bride's parents’ place, which turned out to indeed be situated on its own mountain, and I was glad for the assistance. At least we didn’t have to try to find it on Friday night in the foggy dark!
turn here
we can see a party tent up in the distance
The farm on Hogback Mountain has several different work areas, as the bride’s older brother is currently in the process of becoming a small-scale farmer. He’s mostly raising chickens, goats and pigs, but I think he’s done some logging and other projects on the land as well. Turning onto the road we could see farming areas on the lower part of the mountain, and the house with the striped wedding tents up above. The sun had come out for the wedding day and the fall foliage was lit up in vibrant yellows, oranges and reds. When we had arrived at the parents’ house earlier on Saturday to help set up, the first person we saw was a shirtless man holding a beer and tending two large metal-drum meat cookers fueled by wood. Say hello to the wedding meal!
getting the meat ready to be servedThe bride’s brother owns several animals, and as it happened, one of his pigs was struck by lightning over the summer and was killed instantly. He popped it in a large freezer and saved it up to roast for his sister’s wedding, of course. But he also provided chickens for grilling and at the last minute he threw in a goat for good measure. Apparently the goat in question had annoyed and provoked him one too many times, so he killed it. What else to do with a dead goat but serve it at your sister’s wedding? The goat and the chicken started off the reception meal, while the mostly thawed pig was still roasting in a larger cooker elsewhere on the mountain. All in all, there was an abundance of meat for the wedding guests; no one went hungry.
The reception was a family style sit-down meal, which was preceded by hors-d’oeuvres and hot drinks set out for the guests upon arrival from the ceremony. The sun was out, but the temperature wasn’t more than 50 degrees that day, so after the ceremony many of us changed into more casual clothes to stay warm for the out-door long-haul. There were two kegs of beer and an urn of hot coffee, so we were all able to warm up before dinner. There was a band of local folk musicians playing during dinner - a fiddler, accordionist, guitarist and keyboardist (a real ensemble, not just the imaginary one I conjured above.) After dinner some of the kids yelled out to us lingerers that it was time to dance. A few sets of contra dancing ensued, and if the beer hadn’t warmed us up already, the dancing did!
folkdancing on the mountainAfter the dinner and the dancing, some of the older relatives departed and we younger folk moved the party a little ways down the mountain for a bonfire. At the bonfire site, a goat shed had been turned into a bar area with the two kegs and multiple bottles of liquor for mixing drinks. Someone fired up a generator to power a string of lights and an iPod dock at the shed, and the bonfire was stoked and blazing. People, I don’t know if I can rightly describe this bonfire. It was a sight to behold, and the certified Wilderness First Aider in me was a little on edge. A pit had been dug in the ground in which to place wood for the fire, but this was no ordinary fire pit. It was around 10 feet deep to begin with and perhaps 10 or 15 feet wide. It had been filled up with wood from previous nights’ fires, but on the wedding night they used a pile of lumber mill slab wood dropped off earlier that day in an 18-wheeler. The pile was about 7 feet high and 15 feet long, and people had to climb on top of it in order to throw the wood on the fire. Each time new wood was added, the pile would spread out and rise up until the bonfire was more like 20 feet wide and god-knows-how deep! Pretty soon we were standing on what we thought was the ground but was actually the far ends of the slabs whose opposite ends were burning in the pit. If you looked closely you could see fire beneath you, between the spaces in the boards. It was a tough call because you wanted to stand close to the fire to be warmed up, since the temperature had begun dropping with the sunset, but the closer you stood the greater the risk of falling into the fire. Maine’s motto isn’t “Live Free or Die” like its neighbor state New Hampshire, but it could have been the motto of the after party.
All this time, the lightning pig had been roasting and thawing, thawing and roasting, somewhere down the mountain. At about 10:00 p.m., a pick-up truck roared up to the goat shed and an enticing aroma drew the crowd around. There was the whole roasted pig, little face and all, wrapped in the column of chicken wire with which it had been suspended in the giant meat cooker. It was perfect timing, really, because not only had the earlier reception dinner begun to wear off, but we were all burning calories fast standing out in the cold. The pig was hoisted into the goat shed, the wire cut away, and the bride’s brother began carving into it with his pocketknife. He cut off sections of the skin, some of which still had bristly hairs attached, and used them as impromptu plates. I again had visions of Ghana where people would leave the tough skin on meat pieces and eat their meals with their hands. This was real pulled-pork, pulled steaming off the bone, and people had grease around their mouths and running down their fingers within minutes. Then, leftovers from the earlier meal began showing up – fresh cole slaw and homemade baked beans – perfect sides for the lighting-killed, slow-roasted pig. The evening revelry continued and was still in full swing at midnight when the husband and I looked at each other and said "We’re still feeling good and awake, we might as well start driving."
It was hard to pull our selves away from the celebration on Hogback Mountain. The bride was relaxed and happy – the big day had gone off without a hitch – or with the most important hitch, actually. There was a small group of us attending the wedding who had all served together in the Peace Corps, so in addition to being an important day for the bride and groom, it was a mini-reunion of sorts.
peace corps volunteers reunited in Maine The circumstances of the wedding mirrored many aspects of our collective experience living in Ghana – livestock roaming around, generators providing energy for out-door parties, eating with our hands, and being surrounded by extended family and a large community. While I’d never experienced a wedding like this before in New England, nor here in Minnesota, I’m glad I did this past weekend. It was more than worth the crazy travel schedule to be able to take part in such an important day in our friends’ lives. And I saw that places still exist in this country where people greet every day with an adversity-be-damned attitude of self-sufficiency, living on the land with love, pride and commitment. Here's to the bride and groom, and here's to Hogback Mountain!
view from Hogback Mountain
kitty outside our friends' house
kitty dozing in our living room chair
