How He Proposed

Yip. It’s true. I dun gone and got engaged. This entry will take you through the week of bliss that surrounded the proposal.

Dan and I decided a while back that we would take a full week of for backpacking to celebrate our three-year anniversary. He volunteered to plan the whole thing and I took him up on it.

October 13 – Day One, Stop One – Pt. Reyes National Seashore:

Dan and I left Santa Cruz at sunrise and arrived at the Palomarin Trailhead by 10am.

Here is a view of Bass Lake, about 2 hours after the start of our hike.

Here’s the censored version of Dan swinging off the rope swing at Bass Lake – cold, crisp, refreshing, and liberating.

After playing around in Bass Lake, Dan made us this fine picnic lunch. Everything but the sharp cheddar cheese and balsamic-rosemary-soaked hard boiled eggs were from the farm, including my fresh baked dill bread and Dan’s dehydrated tomatoes and kale chips.

Another 1 1/2 hours and we were just above our Wildcat Campground (see small tents in photo), where we stayed the first night.

Once we got down to our campsite we set down our packs and Dan grabbed his top-secret daypack. We hiked along the beach to this amazing spot:

The bottom of Alamere Falls, right where it feeds into the ocean! I followed Dan across the falls’ stream and around a Cliffside to a beautifully well polished concave rock crevace, shaped by the tides. We took a seat and enjoyed the view:

At this point in our adventure, Dan whips out a bottle of (organic) KiwiStrawberry Wine he and I had made together in early spring. He then pulls out a boom box and, all a grin, gives me my assignment:

“OK, I’ve made you two mix CDs – they’ve been three years in the making and I need you to sit here for the next two hours and totally focus on them… just focus on your breath and listen to each song, and meditate on how much you love me and how you want to spend the rest of your life with me.”

And so, for the next two hours, that is precisely what I did. The mixes crossed genres and generations of musical talent. Their lyrics spoke volumes about the story of our relationship and the hopes we share for our future together. Two hours passed slowly and beautifully, we sat, we stood, we danced naked on the beach. It was the stuff fantastically cheesy movies are mad of, and we loved every moment.

At sunset we relocated to a spot beneath the falls for the final three tracks. And bit by bit, we watched one of the most memorable sunsets of our lives:

Dan, bless his heart, had meticulously planned this whole thing, of course. He knew exactly when the tide would rise and fall, and he knew the exact minute the sun would hit the horizon… and when that moment came:

The final song ended simultaneously and Dan looked at me with absolute seriousness and asked me to open up the player and read what the CD mix was titled.

It read in colorful block letters: “The Will You Mary Me Mix (Seriously)”

All the blood rushed to my head and I turned probably purple at that point as my heart fluttered and I looked up to see him down on one knee, holding a bamboo engagement ring he had hand carved himself.
He had called my parents that very morning to ask permission from both of them, and they’d affirmed, and so it was: we’re engaged!

We walked back to the campsite along the beach under a sky exploding with stars, made another fantastic supper, and closed our eyes… only to open them in amazement each day after the next with our first thoughts in the morning focused on what a blessing it was to be in each place after the next, together, and in bliss.

Please enjoy the photos of the rest of our backpacking “Engagement Honeymoon”:

The morning after Dan proposed, we woke up to the brightness of a full moon setting on the ocean just before sunrise.

We hiked back to Alamere Falls, racing against the tide, and climbed up above to see the other three of this four fall set.

We set down our packs and hiked away from the river and up to the highest peak we could reach, with this fine view.

After that, we couldn’t resist spending another day swinging on the rope swing at Bass Lake (rope swing is beneath red arrow pictured above).

Then we returned to the upper three falls and spent our afternoon doing basically this:

We ended up camping out at that very spot and enjoying another spectacular sunset.

The next morning we hiked out and drove through Yosemite to collect a bear canister on our way to Buckeye Hot Springs. On the way we made the comical mistake of camping out in the snow at 10,000 feet right at the park’s exit. Ooops! It was way too cold for the type of gear we brought, and at about 4:30 in the morning we gave up on keeping warm and headed out to watch the sunrise at one of my favorite all time geological attractions in California:

The tufa towers at Mono Lake!

It ends up we weren’t the only one’s thinking this might be a good place to watch the sunrise that morning!

**I didn't take any pictures during our 3 days at Buckeye Hot Springs in the Eastern Sierras. Why? Because I was way too blissed out to go digging for my camera! We spent three nights camped across the river from these 3 or 4 springs, which are fed by hot spring water that trickles down a sandstone Cliffside above it. Here's a photo I found on the internet of it:

For three days, we dipped each morning before sunrise and twice in the evening, once before sunset and once after sunset.

And then, it was on to Yosemite… the land of a MILLION sunsets.

Our first night there we backpacked just 1 ½ miles (though entirely vertical) up to Inspiration point and, again, we had the whole place to ourselves. We sat Cliffside at our makeshift campsite and watched for at least 1 ½ hours as the sun rose and set and rose and set over El Capitan (the giant rock wall to the left), Half Dome (the half-curved feature in the distant middle), and Bridlevail Fall (difficult to see in this photo, but just down and to the right of Half Dome).

Watch how the shadows change and dance around:

The next morning at the bottom of the trail we had a much better understanding of the trailhead sign that quotes John Muir saying:

On the final night of our vacation, we hiked up to Nevada Falls. The hike was about 5 or 6 miles both ways, and only about 3 miles from Half Dome... The photo of the falls below was after the rainy season, so there is actually much more water than there was while we were there -- but there was much less people too!

Below, note the seeming stillness above the falls, where we camped, alone, again, in bliss:

There were a lot of things to be grateful for throughout this trip, but more than anything, I am grateful for preserved open spaces like these… especially for those spaces we can get to in sustainable ways, by bicycle or by foot. And, equally, I am grateful for those preserved open spaces that we can’t get to, for those wild places too far and too rugged to be de-purified by human soles.