I’m taking the next two weeks off so I figured I’d answer a personal question I get a lot and never get tired of talking about, which is how I got engaged to my wonderful partner.
We’ve actually been together for ten years as of last, which feels like the blink of an eye and an eternity. We were both very much not done baking when we met each other, and it’s been so beautiful to have the chance to grow alongside each other to become the people we are today. Such a big factor in the success of a relationship is whether you can grow in compatible ways, and we’ve picked up so many hobbies together that I can’t imagine doing with anybody else.
One of those hobbies is hiking — when we aren’t working, we love to spend as much time as possible outside together, and one of our favorite places to be outside together is Redwood National Park, in Northern California, which is where it happened.
So we start in Fern Canyon, which is where they filmed one of the Jurassic Park movies, and looks like it, and we climb up this beautiful loop through this old growth forest, and it was our first time really being in that kind of forest, which is the kind of place that makes me understand what some people feel when they’re in an old cathedral, this feeling of awareness of the fleetingness of our lives and the insignificance of our problems in a bigger plan. So we’re really excited, which means that we’re really moving slowly, stopping to look at every fern and mushroom and tree.
And after a while, I look at my phone, and it’s been four hours, and we’ve gone like a mile. Which normally wouldn’t be a problem, but neither of us are morning people, so it’s like 5 pm, the sun is starting to get lower in the sky, and to get to the trailhead we had to go through this gate that the park service closes at sunset.
We wanted to see the whole hike, though, so we picked up the pace to a jog. We kind of speed along this whole ridge, and then down through this narrow ravine that it doesn’t seem like anybody’s been through in weeks, like I keep getting spiderwebs in my face, which is not my favorite thing, and there are bugs everywhere.
And we come out into this sort of coastal meadow, and you can hear the waves, and there’s some wildfire smoke in the air so the sun is casting this unbelievable red glare over everything. We have like maybe an hour until dark. But there’s one problem: there’s this giant elk, grazing and slowly walking on the trail. We keep trying to move forward, but every time we do, it kind of picks up its head and shakes its massive scary antlers at us. You really should not be anywhere near an animal like that. So we duck into this little spot behind these trees that are up against the cliff that we were on top of before, and there’s this tiny little waterfall with ferns everywhere and little frogs hopping around and all that’s left of the sunlight is a golden beam.
I look over at my partner and they kind of had tears in their eyes, and immediately I’m like “are you ok? It’ll be fine, we’ll get out of here, I bet the park service doesn’t even lock that gate.” And they just looked at me and said “I would like to marry you.”
I was shocked - I don’t think I ever really imagined that somebody would propose to me. Growing up as a closeted trans woman, I always thought that I would have to choose between being loved and being myself, and the idea that I could have both felt too good to be true. So I was like “wait, are you serious?”
They nodded and I took this cheap little ten dollar ring off my finger and handed it to them, and they proposed, and I said yes, and they put the ring back on my finger. And then we got out of there and sprinted back to the car and went and ordered every appetizer at the one restaurant in Arcata California that was still open that late.
We couldn’t really take any good pictures, so a year later I dragged us back with my tripod and DSLR. But that was a whole different story. See you all in 2024!