The Holland Lake Lodge is four bouncy miles up a dirt road. The dirt road is 20 miles past the “Deer Xing: Next 53 miles” sign on Highway 83, and Highway 83 is a woodsy half-hour drive outside of Missoula. But for a Montana wedding, it’s the perfect spot.

We arrive three hours early for the 4 p.m. ceremony and park next to an axe plunged into a tree stump. The bride, Brooke, is in a blue swimsuit when she greets us. Gunnar, the groom, is waterskiing.

A lodge has stood on this spot on Holland Lake in the Swan Mountains since 1924. Everything, from the bar to the walls to the door handle, is wooden. As I enter the lobby a man with an Apple laptop taps his keyboard underneath the glazed stare of a mountain goat head.

The lakefront buzzes with wedding preparations. A trellis frames mountains out of a child’s drawing- triangular, overlapping, covered with pines, and balding at the tree line.

A motorboat pulls up and Gunnar, shirtless, steps onto the lakeshore.

This is his quote: “I’m feeling pretty worked after jumping off a 30-foot rope swing and being slammed into the water at 30 mph all day.”

Gunnar spent his youth in Birmingham, AL, while Brooke grew up in Westport, CT. After meeting at college in New England, they moved to Missoula for graduate school. They bought a house and became part of the 16 percent of Missoula County residents who five years ago called a different state home.