A sneak peek at the wonderful wedding on Brian and Oriana at Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum. They definitely take the prize with family who traveled with family from India, Montana (the one place I want to go ore than anywhere else) and California joining them to celebrate their wedding. I think it says everything about a couple when people literally come from all ends of the earth to be with them on their special day.

I know from talking with Oriana that family in INdia are anxiously awaiting some photographs and I hope these give you a glimpse into their wedding day.

More to follow.

I just read an article where they state that Every Mainer has a camp. That statement is pretty true in the woods in Northern Maine where I grew up. For me camp has been two places. Pushaw Lake from the time I could remember until Gamp passed away and Sebec Lae which my parents got in 1999.

Growing up camp was a one room log cabin with an old fashioned slate sink with a well hand pump and no running water. That magical place in my memory was owned by my Gramp and Gram Mac. It’s a place where my parents would bring me every summer from my first swim in the cove in April where there would still be floating ice until their were trees with no leaves scratching a gray sky. Yes, I really did swim that early. I always had to be the fist one in the lake in our family and I still maintain that tradition today beating all my own kids into Sebec lake every spring.

I can remember my Aunt Glenda and Aunt Karrie bringing all 5 cousins up every summer and we would run wild for the week in the Old Town lap-streak with the 10 H.P outboard going from one end of the lake to the other while we explored islands and looked for the elusive 3 foot pickerel or five pound bass. I can remember my Gramp sitting in the front of the boat being driven all over the lake by his grandsons.

It’s a place where we went to pick raspberries with our dads and I still remember my dad coming back to the cabin as white as a sheet after he had woken a sleeping black bear up from his nap in the berry patch.

It’s the place where my cousin Donnie would bring chewing tobacco and we would all try it thinking we were being so cool until my cousin David decided to try it while we were in the boat when he swallowed the chew and turned green. I mean he really turned green he was so sick.

Camp is where my Gramp taught my to drive his truck and where we would take a ride to Tates to pick strawberries.

It’s a place where my dad taught me to sail.

It’s the place where Gram rallied around her family on July 4th weekend in 1982 before she passed away in August of lung cancer. I stayed with my Gram and Gramp after everyone left and had a long talk with my Gramp as a 13 year old kid who tried to act like a brave man for a scared man who was about to lose his wife.

It’s the place where we scattered Gramp’s ashes in 2007 among four generations of his family.

As an adult my parents built a log cabin on Sebec Lake which is 10 miles outside of my hometown of Dover-Foxcroft Maine. Dad bought the land in 1999 and we have have been out there for as long as my own children have memories.

Camp is more refined and the cabin is a true 21st century home with all the amenities you would expect minus one. No internet (which I love). BUT. It’s still camp for my children. It’s Pop’s Lake and Mimi’s cabin to our kids.

Camp is Maine to my kids. It’s a family tradition and is important part of our family’s sanity and quality of life.

Camp is where the kids catch bass on the docks and where a 3 year old thinks he’s hot stuff in his rubber boat.

It’s a place where we build fires with Pop and have S’mores every night.

Where our sons swim until their skin is wrinkled like a prune. Where my oldest learned to water-ski last summer. A place where he’ll learn to drive an ATV this summer. It’s getting up at 4:30 AM to drive to the Forks to go white water rafting on the Penobscot River.

It’s the place where I take them tubing and they tell me one ride is scarier than any roller coaster they’e been on. A place where my daughter picks wild flowers with my wife. Where we still pick raspberries with my dad for mom’s famous raspberry  pies.

Camp is laying in bed at night with my wife and listening to the rain on the roof of the loons crying to one another. It’s lounging in an Adirondack chair by the water watching the kids swim and sitting up late playing yahtzee, pinochle or cribbage. It’s Pop telling the kids that there is a big moose out on the road and everyone piling in the truck to go see it with him.

Camp is a where the kids all want to be woken up on a Friday night drive from Massachusetts as we arrive on the dirt road at midnight because they know they will see a fox, moose, bear, deer, etc walking the road that late night. Camp is magical t the kids. (Mac thought the suit would allow him to fly and Zak had watched Harry Potter and thought magic was real)

Camp is putting 100 worms on a hook so the kids can catch sunfish in a bucket. It’s where I caught a snapping turtle with a Barbie fishing pole that had a small sunfish on it while the kids screamed that I had a dinosaur on the line. It’s where Ryan is in his element with a pole in hand.

Camp is my mom’s baked beans on Saturday night followed by my brother-in-law’s camp breakfast on Sunday morning. It’s where we have continued a 27 year tradition of gathering all the fathers for a Father’s Day lobster and steamers feed.

For me, camp is taking my camera down to the water and capturing that same vista for the 100th time as the sun sets because it never gets old to me. It’s breaking out and being a little silly.

Camp is where I read that stack of non-photography books and magazines I’ve been saving. It’s the family trip into Butterfields to get homemade ice cream on a big waffle cone.

Camp is a new generation of cousins.

Camp is no cell phone, internet, computer, and the only television is to watch the Sox. It’s fun watching my teenagers stand on one leg while they hop up and down thinking that they will get one bar on Edge (No 3G) on their iPhone. It’s where we watch them grow up.