The Proposal

The sun shone brightly in the sky as Bryan and I drove through the scenic Columbia Gorge on a Sunday afternoon. I had just been a bridesmaid in my friend Bryn's wedding on Saturday evening so we decided to stay overnight in Hood River and check out the Dormition of the Theotokos Orthodox Church http://dormitionorthodoxchurch.org/ in The Dalles for Divine Liturgy on Sunday.

We were now on the road and enjoying the beautiful scenery and chatting about how we were going to spend the rest of this perfect day. Bryan suggested that we should stop somewhere in the gorge and go on a short hike, like "to that place where they have the waterfall that you can walk behind that you were telling me about..." he said.

"Oh, Horsetail Falls?" I replied.

"Ya, is it a long hike?" he asked

"No, it's less than a mile each way, we could totally do it." I explained.

I know you might be thinking at this point, "Gosh, Meika this seems like a perfect set up for a proposal, it's a gorgeous sunny day, you two are alone, he wants to go on a hike..." To which I must back up and explain some of the events leading up to this day. Initially I WAS expecting that Bryan would propose on this particular Sunday, in the gorge on the way back from Hood River. We had already received the blessing of our priest to be married on December 27th two weeks prior so the only things Bryan had left to do after that meeting were to 1) Become a catechumen 2) Buy a ring, (preferably the one I had chosen) and 3) Ask my dad for his blessing. All of these things seemed completely doable to me in two weeks time. Bryan became a catechumen on Sunday, August 9th. Now he was down to two tasks.

Bryan, however, did not like the fact that there were "no surprises" and that I had everything all figured out. So he spent most of the week before the proposal spinning a web of very believable lies regarding the ring and my dad's blessing. He started by telling me that "a number of unforeseen events had occurred" and that he had to use almost all the money that he had set aside for the ring and our honeymoon. He told me that he had given a lot of it to his childhood friend who was in trouble. He also explained that he had called my dad and that my dad told him he was "booked solid until Monday." His lies were so convincing that by the time Bryan arrived at Bryn's wedding on Saturday, my hopes of a Sunday afternoon proposal in the gorge had been thoroughly dashed to the ground and trampled upon.

Fast forward back to Sunday afternoon. It was about two o'clock when we arrived at Lower Horsetail Falls off of the Old Columbia Gorge Hwy. It was a short .8 mile hike up to the Upper Horsetail Falls. The trail was teeming with hikers, as was to be expected for a sunny Sunday afternoon. When we got to the falls it was packed so I suggested we hike a bit further to viewpoint where you can see a 180 degrees view of the river gorge. We stopped and talked for about 15 minutes at the viewpoint before going back to the falls. Once we were behind the falls a second time, Bryan stopped and looked down at the pool of water below the falls.

"Do you want to go down there?" he asked.

Looking down at the slippery rocks and the spray of icy water, I replied, "You mean, down there, with the glacial water spray? Not, really, I have to go to the bathroom."

"Let's just go walk along the stream a little bit and we can take some pictures." He replied.

Now anyone who knows me knows, that he had just said the magic word. You don't ever have to ask me twice if there are pictures involved so we climbed down to a large rock and snapped a few pictures. Then Bryan looked over at the pool of water and suddenly said, "Can you wait here a few minutes, I just really want to get in that water, it looks so refreshing…" At this point I was thinking that Bryan had literally gone crazy. That water, I know, is as cold as an ice bath, and everything about this situation was so unlike Bryan. (If you know Bryan, you know that he doesn't really like to do any kind of physical activity so swimming in a glacial pool of water is waaaaaaay out there for him.)

Nevertheless, he took his shirt off and waded into the water up to his waist. I kept yelling at him across the pool, "What are you doing?" to which he would respond by looking back and waving at me with a boyish grin. After about a minute in the water he started to scratch his head and then got out and started walking around the pool to the waterfall.

He stood behind the falls for a minute then reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring box. Then, believe it or not, he stepped into the waterfall, held out the ring box and yelled as loud as he could, "WILL YOU MARRY ME?!?"

I hollered back, "YES, OF COURSE!" but he couldn't hear me amidst the pounding water. All he saw me do was hold up my camera and start taking pictures, (which I did, AFTER I said yes). After limiting myself to two pictures, I made my way over the slippery rocks, ditched the camera, pulled him out of the waterfall and told him "Yes, yes, of course, yes!" Then I looked down at the box he was holding I found THE RING that I had wanted along with a green wire ring creatively twisted to resemble a diamond ring. I knew right away what this was, it was the ring that his dad had used to marry his mom. Bryan told me that his parents had overnighted it so he could use it for the proposal.

I was so caught up in the moment that I didn't realize until I looked up that for the few minutes that Bryan had been on his proposal mission, the trail was oddly empty, there were no other hikers in either direction. We had literally had the waterfall and chilly lagoon all to ourselves! No one had witnessed our life changing moment but us! We climbed up to the trail and waited for someone to pass by to take our picture which eventually happened.

Overjoyed, excited, giddy, and wet, we made our way back down the trail hand in hand, my left ring finger shining brightly.