I met Nick his senior year in college at Alaska Pacific University, a school I randomly chose for graduate school because my roommate Kim had the view-book in an old file from an Alaska vacation with a past boyfriend, and I liked the pictures of students kayaking across the page, learning from the world around them, from the mighty Pacific to the nameless creeks, with mountains as an ever-present backdrop.
So I applied, got accepted, and left New England for Alaska.
I first saw those blue eyes of Nick’s when I walked into a second-floor classroom for a meeting about Expedition Leadership, a September block class that involved a week of planning for a three week trek across the Alaska Range, south west of Denali.
The advisor assigned to me, who introduced himself as Dave, taught the class and encouraged me to skip Intro to Wilderness Skills and join the more advanced expedition course. I thought this was based on my previous three-day trip on the Nepali Coast and ten days doing the Hundred Mile Wilderness of the Appalachian Trail, but I later learned he solicited Kim and I as his own private social experiment, throwing two older women in with the ten young men signed up to spend 21 days in the wilderness, finding our way across the land with only maps, compasses, and the sweat of our brows.
A Survivor of sorts only live.
During that first planning meeting, Dave asked, "Is anyone in here a vegetarian?"
I reluctantly raised my hand, thinking I'd be the only one and feeling bad for complicating the food packing, when I noticed the boy with the blues eyes, the one who was reading a newspaper when I first walked in but looked up long enough for my breath to halt, raise his hand too.
Too young, I thought.
Somewhere into the first week of our expedition, days into our trail-less hike along riverbeds and over mountain passes, through snow to my knees and thickets of Alders and Devil’s Club, after countless moments of eye contact with Nick and hours of walking side by side asking each other questions, I spent a morning strolling along with our professor and leader Dave, and he asked, "How long have you and Kim been together?"
I laughed and responded, "We're not."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I just assumed--"
"Its OK."
And I can see why he made this assumption. Kim and I moved from our apartment in Maine to Alaska in my green Subaru Impreza. She didn't shave her legs and I wore my hair above my ears. And we were the type of friends who could finish each others sentences and read each other's eyes without talking.
But since he assumed Kim and I were dating, he missed the fact that Nick and I leaned towards breaking one of his trip rules: No relationships can start during an expedition.
While Dave imagined me a lesbian, he failed to notice me falling in love with my male walking companion.
There is something about living out of a backpack that strips people of pretensions and allows you to see someone's soul far quicker than months of awkward first and third and seventh dates. I liked the man I saw before me, patient, hardworking, helpful, kind, with eyes that made my heart stutter-step when they caught mine.
I learned, like me, he came from educator parents, he wanted to live simply, surrounded by the outdoors, and do what he could to make the world a better place.
But I wasn't confident he liked me back until Cody Pass, a morning climb through newly fallen snow, on a day when Nick woke up not feeling well and I felt my strongest, leading the whole crew post-holing up the side of the mountain, with forty pounds on my back-- Nick caught up to me halfway up and we walked side by side to the top instead of using each others footprints, and when we reached the summit, Nick held my arm and smiled at me in a way that showed we shared more than good conversations. A smile that said: Yes, I like you too.
We took our first picture together on the top of Cody Pass and to this day it is still one of my favorites:
We tried to hide our feelings over the rest of the trip--sneaking kisses when noone was watching or holding hands in our four-person tent late at night, just staring at each other, not daring to move--in part because we were on this journey with others and also because when I met Nick he had fallen out of love with the woman he still lived with back in Anchorage.
By the second week of our expedition, when avalanches turned us back from our intended route and we finally had a day of sunshine to dry out from the wet September snow, our gear sprawled across the river bed like a yard sale, all of us stretching out our sore bodies in the sun, I looked over at Nicholas Aaron Jordan and knew that, though I'd known him for less than a month, I lay next to the man I wanted to marry.
When the van came to pick us up on our 15th day, I cried, not out of relief to return to civilization but because I didn't want the magic of the trip to end. I wanted to keep walking, with everything I needed on my back, and the man with the kind blue eyes by my side.
I worried that when we returned to campus Nick would return to his girlfriend and forget about me when faced with the complex task of unweaving intertwined lives.
Late that same night, as I unpacked my gear in the graduate housing I shared, I heard a knock on the kitchen door. I opened it to see Nick leaning against the frame, a six-pack in his hand. "I did it," he said with a sheepish grin, "Do you want to go for a ride?”
The following weekend Nick asked me to hike Lost Lake with him and his friend Tonio, a 15 mile tundra trail, five miles up, five across, five down. The rain started on the way up so we chose to run the upper section and down, past the misty mountain lakes, hidden from the road far below. In awe of the scenery and my hiking companion, I remember watching Nick weave along the trail, agile and strong, and thinking: How is it possible that this beautiful man loves me too?
In the parking lot, 15 miles later, as we waited for Tonio to hitchhike back to our car, Nick and I shivered in the pouring rain, exhausted but playing a balance game to stay warm, standing toe to toe, arms up, palms out, and trying to see who steps first when we clapped each others hands.
Neither one of us won more often than the other.
And so here I am, almost 15 years later, sitting on our front porch on a warm June morning, writing about how we met, the day after returning from a night of camping together to celebrate the 12-year anniversary of our Alaskan wedding, (not to be confused with the Cape Cod one a month later), where we kayaked to a beach to say our vows, with a backdrop of red rocks and the ever-present mountains overlooking Katchemak Bay.
We camped in Hatcher’s Pass, just the two of us, and hiked and ran between 20 and 25 miles to start training for a run we will do together in August on the Lost Lake trail, returning for the first time to those misty lakes of new love.
We spent the night sitting side by side in our camp chairs, watching the sun move across the mountains, a glass of red wine in our free hand, our other fingers intertwined, listening to the sound of the Little Su making its way to the ocean, the endless flow of water moving over rocks.
It was just what we needed.
Loved this blog post -- both the history and back story, and the snapshop into the here and now. Congrats to you and Nick for 15 years together!
Posted by: Candice | 06/17/2015 at 10:50 AM
What a beautiful love story. Thank you for sharing.
Posted by: Stacy | 06/18/2015 at 06:28 AM
Thank you, every day I feel lucky to have Nick in my life due to a random decision to come to AK:)
Posted by: Christy | 06/18/2015 at 10:58 AM
Just beautiful!!!!!
Posted by: Toni | 06/18/2015 at 12:38 PM
Loved this backstory too and the pictures! So glad you found each other and here's to
more getaways soon!!
Posted by: Kate | 06/18/2015 at 06:12 PM
Yours is a great love story! Congratulations :-)
Posted by: Tabatha | 06/20/2015 at 03:43 PM
Incredibly beautiful and beautifully written.
Posted by: Missy | 07/05/2015 at 01:43 PM