Dan and Leanne met around a bonfire with the swirling, soothing sound of the Colorado River in the distance. Dan had just begun work as an adaptive raft guide at the same nonprofit where Leanne had been working as a member of the administrative team. (She often referred to personal floatation devices (PFDs) as portable document formats (PDFs) in those days). Whether it was the watered-down white wine or an active act of divinity, its hard to say; somehow, the two took great interest in talking to one another into the early hours of the morning.

At sunset from a desert mesa overlooking the magical river we met on more than two years ago, Dan proposed. There were many tears of happiness for the ways in which our authentic selves were present in that moment, as we drank Spotted Cows wrapped in duct tape. With the Milky Way spilled over our heads and a crescent moon on the descent, we thought of how we had experienced love in our lifetimes for it all to culminate to this moment, the beginning of our earthly lives together as husband and wife—a moment of interconnectedness in the breathless high desert we call home.