Meeting Daniel
I was sitting on the ground outside of the local grocery store eating my last meal before heading out for the eight-day backpacking shift for the wilderness therapy program we were working at when I met him.
He had overheard me talk about my plan to start my hike northward on the Appalachian Trail in a few weeks. Daniel chimed in and said, “I’ve always wanted to hike the AT ever since going to camp as a little kid.”
“Well then you should just come with me” is how I replied half-jokingly.
Thinking back on this memory makes me chuckle. Little did I know that two years later I would be writing this after successful hiking that crazy 2193 mile trail and indeed Daniel would be coming along with me.
Everything was moving fast and before I knew it we were at the moment where I had to choose what I wanted to do. Leave for a solo attempt of the AT or stay back and see where things went with the man I just met.
You see, Daniel was not in a position to leave that spring. His lease wasn’t up yet and there was no way to get all the loose ends tied off in time. I made my decision and then covid hit.
My friends and family that knew about my AT plans for that spring thought that the reason why I didn’t go was because of covid and all the uncertainty of that year. I didn’t tell them the real reason. I was already going to wait because I met a man two weeks before and I was madly in love.
I knew pretty quickly that I was going to marry Daniel. He had a twinkle in his eye. Literally. I remember having him walk under another light to make sure it was still there and wasn’t some sort of optical illusion. It was still there and I still see it from time to time.
The expression “when you meet the one you just know it” never made sense to me growing up until one day it did. The deepest part of my heart knew and I realized the rest of it came down to decisions and how I choose to move forward living my life.
I believe that you get to make decisions not all of them but some and you are accountable for the ones that you do make. I have decided to choose Daniel and continue to choose him for the rest of my life. I have never regretted my decision to wait on him and couldn’t have asked for a better hiking and life partner.
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A little more about us:
Daniel and I met working in Wilderness Therapy in Georgia back in 2019. We both have histories that brought us to the belief that the woods is healing and that nature is not only good for the soul but necessary for us.
We never had a “normal” relationship. We were in the woods for half of the time and then the other half we would spend with each other. We were living in two different states and would commute to our long shifts but then were faced with the question of what we do with our off shift. The commute made it so that it wasn’t possible to do a little date night and then drive home. The drive would be too far plus it was March of 2020, and we all remember how that was. We had to decide pretty quickly whether we liked each other or not. We decided that we did.
Pretty soon, his lease was up in Atlanta and he knew he couldn’t sign another lease if he wanted to thru-hike that next year so we found ourselves sharing the bunch bed I had in Asheville NC.
From there, my sister was about to do her first big move out of our hometown in Ohio after she graduated from college. She allowed us to live in her apartment rent-free to save up for the AT as long as we helped raise her tiny corgi puppy. This has been my favorite job to date. She is the reason why our AT-thru-hike dream was possible.
We upgraded from a tiny bunk bed to a small two-person tent for our lodging during our 2193 mile hike across the Eastern United States. We got to know a lot about each other during those days. Life felt simpler then and we often find ourselves wanting to go back.
We sold my car and bought a van recently. Having just one car poses some problems when trying to work at two separate seasonal jobs in a new area. Oh well, that’s the gift hindsight gives you. We have been saving up money and are planning on fixing it up and living out of it full-time hopefully either before or right after our wedding in September of 2022. Or who knows those goals are loose and life is crazy. But that’s the dream and we are sure going to try.
Watch as we fail, succeed, and always try again.
Stay tuned
from the other side 