HUNTINGTON — Danielle Reid got married Saturday afternoon at the picnic ground near the bottom of Huntington Canyon. Life moves on, even in Huntington, where Danielle's uncle Kerry Allred and five other miners may be trapped forever deep inside the Crandall Canyon Mine.

Huntington is a close-knit family, says Mayor Hilary Gordon, who officiated Saturday at Danielle's wedding.

Mayor Gordon is the town's only florist, so even before the events of the past month she has given a lot of thought to the way life is an endless series of beginning and endings. Funerals, weddings, new babies, the death of a new baby — a florist becomes enmeshed in a town's cycle of tragedies and triumphs.

Huntington's very public tragedy took another sad turn Friday when an official from the Mine Safety and Health Administration announced to families that the search had been indefinitely stopped, and four weeks of bore holes and hope were officially over.

Two hours earlier, several dozen family members and friends of the lost miners stood on a ridge in the Manti-La Sal Forest and released a golden eagle, each feather representing a prayer. Sandwiching that event, Gordon received two phone calls: one from a friend whose infant grandson had just died, the other about the birth of Gordon's latest great-grandson.

"Yes, I deal with people's sorrows a lot, people's losses," says Gordon. "Everyone handles it differently." Her hope is that an ecumenical memorial service next Sunday at the junior high in Huntington will give the miners' grieving families and friends a quiet space within themselves so healing can take place.

In Huntington and the surrounding communities, the light poles are still wrapped in yellow ribbons, and signs still say "Never Lose Hope." The flag in front of City Hall on Main St. has been at half-mast since the death on Aug. 16 of three miners trying to rescue their buddies.

The flag could also be for the trapped miners, of course, but even when MSHA announced the search was over, no one used the word "dead."

Gordon had been mayor for just three weeks when the mine collapsed, but has emerged as a straight-shooting, eloquent, lilting voice.

She never intended to be mayor, she says. And then one day, sitting on the City Council, she had what she describes as a "funny feeling." The council was looking for someone to replace the former mayor, who was resigning for health reasons, and the funny feeling told Gordon she was "supposed to sign up."

Still, Gordon resisted. Then she'd be doing the laundry, and the voice would say "you haven't signed up for mayor yet," and she would say "Would you stop? I'm not going to."

In the end she did put her name forward and was approved unanimously. And she admits it sounds like an ego trip but from a spiritual place, "I was supposed to do this."