Sarah Haas, Peak to Peak. I suppose newspaper engagement announcements are now a thing of the past. In the age of the internet, such a formal proclamation hardly seems necessary: much easier to post a note online where family and friends are condensed into convenient bubbles. Perhaps different expectations apply to the wealthy or prominent among us, for those families whose additions and deaths ripple outward to affect a larger society. But for most of us, and for me, the new ring on my finger doesn’t seem particularly newsworthy, no matter how personally momentous. Were it not for the spirit of St. Valentine, and for this love themed issue, I would have been content to relegate our announcement to the online world.

After all our love was born on the internet. Johnny and I first met in the Spring of 2017, on the dating app Tinder. For him, a big city man turned mountaineer who’d spent most of his career online, the internet was as good a place as any to find love. For me though, a poor, country writer who lived in books and notebooks, Tinder appeared a new frontier, full of danger and opportunity. In his profile, Johnny looked handsome and kind, at least as far as one can tell from pictures of a guy cuddling with dogs and collecting firewood from the forest. And so, after giving it some thought, I concluded (loosely): Why not?

For our first date we met at the Gold Hill Inn, exactly half way between my equestrian house in Hygiene and his mountain cabin in the Gilpin County woods. We’d intended to meet only for a drink but ended up spending four hours together over a six-course meal. On that night we weren’t concerned with the words that defined us, but only with the way that we both were in the world. Then it was enough that we both had an appetite and that while we ate, we both laughed easily. Later though, he would tell me that what mattered most was the look in my eyes, one that felt familiar and like the real-life version of his favorite love song.

Both of us in our thirties, we were old enough to have known love in many shades, and to have flirted with the idea of marriage in other moments, and so in the beginning we were wary of the context of our love while embracing the love itself. But soon it became clear the separation was untenable and our closeness inevitable. We moved in together, got a dog together, developed a routine together. We dreamed of a shared future and could not imagine its end. Marriage, although still uncertain, felt sure.

On Christmas Day 2018, Johnny, the dog and I went on the same walk we’d been on countless times before, heading out the back door and into the trail-less national forest that extended back for miles. We trudged through snow until we made it to a nameless lookout that had become our favorite destination and took in the view, never too familiar to blow our minds with its beauty. Johnny said something about how grateful he was for a life so beautiful, simple and good and by the time I turned to look at him, he was already down on one knee, holding a little box and saying words I can hardly remember through my eager and happy tears. I’d never worn a diamond before and I trembled as it slipped onto my finger, reflecting only the light of the world.

Not more than thirty minutes after we got engaged, we became concerned, not with love (that was sure) but with words. First, that I had forgotten to say “yes” when asked if I would marry Johnny. Confirmation seemed important and so I offered a thousand yesses to make up for the absent one.

Second, we began to wonder what we were supposed to call each other now that we were betrothed. Would I be a fiancée with two e’s and Johnny a fiancé with one? The words felt foreign because they were, old French for “promise,” even older Latin for “trust,” and although the meanings temporal, we were reluctant to adopt such a temporary nomenclature.

Clamoring for the fixture of marriage, we wanted to hurry past the transitional phase and so decided to call each other “future wife” and “future husband” instead. “Future” because the word made us sound like sci-fi characters who had defied the bond to the present; “wife” and “husband” because, well, they were words we would have to get used to.

I don’t know many a modern woman who doesn’t object, at least partially, to the words “wife” (German for “woman”) and “husband” (Old Norse for “master of the house”). Certainly, a woman is more than just a wife and a marriage without a master. But likewise, I don’t know many a modern couple, no matter their genders, that doesn’t hunger to claim the traditional terminology for its colloquial implications of romantic commitment.

Thankfully, an old and wise friend offered reassurance, reminding me that a word, like a marriage, always evolves. Long before couples met on the internet, before a husband was a master and a wife was just a woman, the terms referred to the partnership required to till a field: the man who cultivated and the woman who reaped. Together they engaged the cycles of life.

Love is a big word—marriage, too—words so big they seem to defy our ability to understand them. But, like the seasons that are regular and awesome, it seems best simply to abide their mystique and to celebrate their joyous cycles, together, as one.

This is an irregular column in this weekly column, which is typically about locals living along the Peak-to-Peak. To suggest someone for a profile please email Sarah at mountainfolktales@gmail.com.

(Originally published in the February 14, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)