In addition, I won $100 from the Good Life Magazine of Wenatchee, WA. Here's the story:

Rescuing Our Food at Domke Lake. First date with Terry.

I met Terry at a YMCA “Youth in Government” training in Olympia in 1982. Terry was a YMCA program director in Wenatchee while I was a YMCA program director in Seattle. For four days, I gazed across the table at Terry’s bedroom eyes. He was also a hiker. When it was time to leave, I pushed myself across the room and introduced myself to Terry, handing him my business card. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you in Olympia,” I said.

In Wenatchee, Terry drove around for four months looking at my business card taped to his Subaru ashtray.

At the Youth in Government program in April, Terry and I fell in love in front of 400 high school students. Highly unprofessional. Terry lied about being a runner and bought running shorts. We ran seven miles around Lake Olympia, talking and laughing. For two days, I laughed as Terry stiff-legged up the marble steps of the Capitol building.

Our first date was a backpacking trip to Domke Lake. Terry didn’t realize the Lake Chelan ferry started on Sunday. I arrived on Friday afternoon. So, Terry scrambled and hired a float plane to fly us from Chelan to Domke Lake. From the air, Domke Lake looked like an emerald surrounded by green ridges covered in evergreen trees. Wow!

I had put our food for the weekend in a large Ziploc bag, then into a stringed bag to hang high in a tree away from bears. Arriving at the lake, Terry loosely tied the food bag to a floating log to keep the food cool.

“Terry!” I called, alarmed. “The food bag is floating away in the lake!”

Terry couldn’t swim. (I taught him to swim later.) I zipped into the woods and found a branch long enough to reach the food if I hurried, stripping off small branches as I ran. Carefully walked the floating log- using the long branch for balance like the Wallenda family- and rescued our food for the weekend.

We did a cross-mountain romance. Terry sucked me over the mountains like a romantic vacuum cleaner. We were married in 1985. Our daughter was born in 1990.

“What’s the point of killing yourself hiking to a high ridge or peak, and you can’t see squat in the fog, mist and rain?” I reply when people ask if I hike in Western Washington. Besides, Western WA trails are insanely overcrowded.

After our divorce and a few escapes, I stayed in Wenatchee because I love the spectacular hiking here.

Photos:

1. Rescuing our food at Domke Lake. Memorial Weekend 1982.

2. Me, 28, and Terry, 32, at Lake Ingalls before we were married. August 1982.