At the early hour of 4:15 AM, I woke Lindsay up from her bed for a "birthday" surprise a day early. As she is literally screaming, "It's still dark!" and having a minor temper tantrum I managed to lure her out of her warm bed with the promise of hot chocolate and peanut M&M's in the car. Our quest carried us westward towards Saddle Mountain. We arrive to the mountain around 5:30 AM. Still dark we brave the hike to the top to watch the sunrise. Half a mile into our hike it starts to get a little bit lighter and it makes the trip a little easier when you can see the ground you are walking on. A few minutes later we are about one mile up the mountain when I hear something not too far away from us. I dismiss it as a tree swaying or groaning tree (or maybe an Ent for all you Lord of the Ring fans). Lindsay is walking ahead of me at this point to curb her fear of all the killers who follow her everywhere. A moment later I hear a similar sound but much louder and even more distinguishable (not an ent). At this point Lindsay looks at me with the most horrified, scared look I have ever seen. I believe the expression on my face was not too far off. I said, "Lindsay, let's stand behind this big tree so we can figure out what's going on." No more than 10 seconds later, from another direction we both hear a loud, "ROOOOOOAR". Yes, bears. Later I found out bears are coming out of hibernation about now and bear hunting season is mere weeks away. In my head I know I am going to have to tell Lindsay to run down the steepest part of the hill and I am going to fight off 2-3 black bears with my trusty pocket knife. It sounded like they were about 25 yards away or so, so I look at lindsay more seriously than I ever have and I told her "Ok, there are bears up there so we need to go back down as fast as we can." Frightened, she looks at me and simply says, "ok". On our decent down the hill I realize my sweet, romantic, sappy proposal was ruined by bears ( I even had and orange as a representation of her heart I was going to ask for, for all you young lifers). I stopped her about 30-45 seconds down the path and pleaded to Lindsay, "Lindsay I waned to come up here for your birthday and tell you how much I love you but there is more than that." "What? Why are we stopping?" She was baffled to why we might be stopping with several black bears right above us. "Lindsay, I had everything planned out, it was going to be sweet, you would have loved it, I even brought an orange (like she knew where I was going at that point), and I just love you so much" I continued. As I got down on one knee I asked, "Lindsay Melton, will you marry me?". "But what about the bears?" was her answer. I reassured her we would continue down the mountain and asked again. This time her answer was yes! We fumbled to get the ring on her finger and had a brief (and I mean as brief as you can get) kiss, and headed down the mountain. At the bottom all we could do is laugh at the situation and we knew, of course this would happen to us. Who else? Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it.Ok- How cute is he?
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