Getting Married: The proposal

On the trail.

So I assume people want the longer version of how Leif proposed. It’s a pretty good story. Of course it starts with me being all freaked out because I was facing the prospect of leaving in a couple of months and really, really not wanting to. But quietly freaked out, because men are like wild animals, they frighten easily and I didn’t want him to run away from me in terror. I tried to ooze cool. Not sure if I succeeded. Actually, I know I didn’t, but he handled it very well.


We had been talking about a trip to Cinque Terra. He has been there with groups several times every year and thought it would be a nice trip for us. We prefer trips that are active, and Cinque Terra is kind of a National Park for hikers. There are trails that connect five villages on the coast and thousands of people every year go there. It's very beautiful.

Locking our love in Italy
(corny, but fun)

He made me work for this. We climbed and descended about a thousand feet in four miles of hiking before lunch. We had seafood (naturally) in a colorful little village sticking out into the sea. The last path we hiked is called the Via dell’Amore (the way of love) and that’s where he proposed to me. On the coast of Italy with the fresh sea air blowing around us. Yeah, as my friend Jo says, he’s a keeper.

We toasted our future from a common blue plastic cup (we were hiking, you can’t carry too much and he already had a bottle of wine in his pack) and left our own remembrance of the day on a lock someone else had left there.

We are very, very happy. Now to figure out how to get married in Italy.