So, it started when we met in middle school. Logan would walk me home from school, but as most middle school relationships go, we weren't together long. It was an ongoing joke that we would be dating again whenever he was coming back around and would tell my mom that he had a secret he needed to tell her that I wasn't allowed to hear.

We always found ourselves coming back into each other's lives in high school and again in college. I was always moving and made my way to Virginia, Australia, Massachusetts, and California until I chose to move back home when Covid made me realize I did not like being so far away from my people.

On a trip to Dolly Sods, I was standing outside of Sheetz waiting on my mom and Tony when I could feel someone trying to burn a hole through me with their eyeballs. There was Logan in the middle of nowhere. I brushed it off and we went about our day until we were wrapping up our adventure and were going to stop at Blackwater Falls. We made our way to the viewing deck and I quickly identified Logan's voice. I, being the most adult person ever, abandoned my mom and Tony and ran into the woods to avoid seeing him. I was whistled out of the woods once the coast was clear only to be parked right between him and his friend. We made it out of there, then yet again at the same Sheetz as earlier when I was talking about how I couldn't believe that he didn't say hi to my mom that I swung the door open and there he was FOR THE THIRD TIME.

I walked past him without a word, then somehow because we were slowpokes we ended up pulling out behind him to head back to town. Later that night, I DMed him to let him know his taillight was out. (Smooth, I know.)

We talked for a bit after that, but in my mind, he wasn't that interested so things fizzled out until I messaged him after New Year's Eve and he, knowing that I'm always down for a last-minute trip, invited me to Taughannock Falls. After convincing him to not let us freeze to death that evening in his truck tent, we've been on this journey together.

We went on more adventures, Buddy and Luna fell in love with him, we built our home (I still think marriage might be easier than handling house construction stress), and now we are taking our next step on our adventure.

To say Jenn and I have known each other for a while would be a bit of an understatement, the universe has had a funny way of always putting us into each other’s lives at various points. I used to walk Jenn home from middle school, tried to teach her how to skateboard and used to hang out at her house to watch the Nightmare before Christmas. Obviously most middle school relationships don’t typically withstand the test of time.

Fast forward through the high school years, and Jenn I reconnected in college. Four hours of drives gave us an obstacle that we managed, but ultimately I ended up moving to Colorado, and she continued to traverse around various cities.

Fate would have it almost 8 years down the road that we would cross paths again. I was on a work trip driving to Blackwater Falls to do the Canaan Loop trail. Destiny would put us at the same Sheetz gas station, at the same time, 2 hours away from home in Oakland, Maryland. When I first drove past her smoking her cowboy killer, it didn’t even process that it was her. I thought she was still living in LA at the time and never thought we would be in the same place at the same time, especially quite a drive away from Uniontown. We went about our days, her going to Dolly Sods and me driving the trails sipping on a jar of moonshine. At the end of the day we stopped at the Blackwater Falls handicap ramp to get a view of the waterfall.. lo and behold they would decide to stop at that same viewpoint. She recognized my voice through the woods and decided the best course of action would be to scurry into the woods and search for mushrooms rather than have to see me. I was on the deck taking pictures of all of us, directing my coworkers to pose for the camera.. she was frolicking like a fairy with the goal of avoidance. Before we left that specific spot I was putting air in all of our tires and she managed to slip away before I had even noticed she was there. Begin the ride back home, and the universe trying to tell us something. I stopped back at the Oakland Maryland Sheetz as previously mentioned, go to pull the door open, and out walks Jenn and Marla (her mom). This is when it hit me that Jenn was in fact back home, and that I was too stunned to even say hi to Marla (sorry future mother-in-law). We both left the Sheetz, I somehow managed to pull out of there before her (thank you Marlboro for giving her an excuse to message me), and I get a message saying that my taillight is busted. “I know, that’s why there is tape on it.” (She thinks she’s smooth).

We spent the drive messaging back and forth, when we decided that it would be a great idea to take a drive through the mountains that would continue on till 4 in the morning, despite me having to work. We spent the night reminiscing, catching up on what we missed in each other’s lives over the years, and singing together.

We’d continue talking sporadically, but it never got too serious between us after fate ran us into each other on that October day. We kept each other at arms length and kind of just checked in on each other through the winter, but our relationship wasn’t ready to flourish quite yet. But alas, I couldn’t keep the red one away, and on New Year’s Eve I received a text.. “Do you want to ruin your New Year already” in hopes that I would pick her up and take her for another one of those rides in the mountains that we’ve been doing since we were kids. A text that I wouldn’t receive until the next day because I was asleep before the ball even dropped.

I responded the next morning, and she played it off like she didn’t even remember texting me. Rather than being gentle about it and asking for dinner or a cute date, my question for her was “what are you doing this weekend?” Luckily, she had nothing planned.. but I did; a 5 and a half hour drive through wind and snow to the finger lakes of New York to view Taughannock Falls, complete with -12 degree tent camping. She obliged to be my passenger princess in my little Orange Tacoma, but as it would turn out, she wasn’t totally down for frostbite in a tent in the middle of the woods as the temperature dropped and the snow accumulated. We ended up getting a hotel room for the evenings that we were there, eating some of the best bacon we’ve had in our lives at a little NY diner, and seeing so many waterfalls on that trip.

It didn’t take long for me to look at her through a different set of eyes. Jenn and I have always had this connection, this understanding of each other, but seeing her now as a woman, not through the eyes of a middle school or college kid.. I knew that the woman sitting next to me was the woman I wanted as my passenger princess for the rest of my time on this planet. I would look at her walking up to a waterfall and my heart would skip a beat, listen to the Scared to Death podcast on our drives and just glance at her and get misty eyed. I was falling in love, hard and fast. By the time I dropped her back off at her house at the end of that trip I was absolutely smitten; and as it would turn out, I think she was too (although she was a lot more reserved about it). Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years. 2 years of adventures, from Hocking Hills, to Yellowstone. Helping me build my business, fostering my creative and artistic growth. 2 years of thinking to myself “when is the right time to ask this woman to spend our lives together?” But I think both of us already knew how intertwined we were…

Life was happening, new jobs, my business was steadily growing, we built a house together with a pretty spruce green door and black siding. I got Jenn her very own camera and lenses so she could not only become my dedicated second shooter at weddings, but also so she could refind her love for photography and wildlife. I won over the love of Buddy and Tuna (Buddy is my dog now, don’t @ me). We’ve learned to navigate living together, still trying to figure out how she puts up with my methane factory whenever we are asleep. She wakes up most mornings to hot coffee, and a kiss on the forehead before I leave for my day job; And I come home after a long day to a smile and two dogs that are so excited to see me that they can’t even contain it. We spend our evenings watching beautiful sunsets out of our back window, figuring out which new anime are worth our viewing time, and listening to me snore before I respond with “I wasn’t asleep.”

I planned us a return trip to Hocking Hills, complete with a stay at an escape room that we had to figure out puzzles and pamper ourselves and each other, a pair of diamond earrings to throw off any suspicions that during this trip, I was going to kneel before her and ask her to be my wife. I had the ring within feet of her for a full 24 hours and she hadn’t a clue. I think she started to pick up on it with how much I was recording our hike through Hocking Hills, but she didn’t fully figure it out. I spent a good half an hour at the foot of a waterfall, cameras set up, pretending like I was shooting a YouTube video and waiting for passersby to clear out so we could have a moment to ourselves. I was ready to make it official, I kneeled and asked her to be my wife. And now here we are, taking the next steps in our adventure. Ready to make her my Mrs. Spiker, and start on all the things we want in our future, whether it’s cats (we are welcoming a kitten named Toaster into the family), kids, or continuing to the grow the business to a point that it’s fully self-sufficient. I’m excited to see where this life takes us together, and proud to be inseparable from her.