A Wedding Hike

Today, according to the New York Times, more than 39,000 couples—78,000 people—will get married. 10/10/10, many brides feel, is the perfect date—a perfect ten three times. 39,000 weddings.

39,000 weddings and I will crash one.

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I try looking on the internet for big weddings in Berkeley—I want to be one of at least two hundred—but can’t find details. Tons of venues. Plenty of parking. I could just go to a garden or a park—any garden or park today. Just show up. Just show up and find out there are sixteen guests.

Fuck it.

I drive to Marin.

I take a hike: the Dipsea Trail.

Sunlight darts on the low ocean, pours through moss and leaves, illuminates trail-dust and twigs and the little hairs on my arms. Shade pounces then retreats.

The ocean shimmers like hot air, then evaporates like hot air into the too-blue sky.

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The Dipsea Trail leads me along a ridge—sky surrounds me—and down to Stinson Beach. It’s six o’clock and the sun is low, almost touching the water, and the water swallows silver pools to black and silver pools, unswallowed, grow. Waves swell and crash and splash the sand with light.

I hear clapping—people cheering, now—and look up. Down the beach, not fifty feet away, a couple just got married. Behind them, decorated in red lanterns and shaded by giant red umbrellas, a dance floor reflects the ocean.

Two hundred people, at least, I’d say.