Sometimes, inspiration comes from total strangers, when you least expect it. Take, for example, the Wednesday I met Matt. I was hiking up the Mount Hunger Trail, and Matt was coming down. We stopped to exchange the usual pleasantries, and when I asked how he was doing, he said, “I’m exhausted!”
This is not your typical answer to the typical greeting exchange (“How ya doin?” … “Good’n you?”) so I pursued, assuming he’d made it to the summit. “You went all the way?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied, “I made it to the top, and I was carrying a 30-pound rock!”
Two things flashed through my mind: super-jock in training, and some sort of symbolic parting with a deceased friend, either human or pet. Still, I had to ask. “Why? Why on earth did you carry a 30-pound rock to the summit of Mount Hunger?”
“I had it engraved with my marriage proposal to my girlfriend, and I’m bringing her up here on Friday to read it,” Matt told me.
Right here on the trail, it appeared that I might have just met the most romantic man in the world; certainly one of the happiest. He was so excited it made me smile, and then I got really excited too, because I had gone hiking in hopes of coming up with a topic for this column, and Matt was handing it to me like cake on a plate. My article would be about how Matt proposed to Susie on the summit of Mount Hunger. So here it is, a story of romance and love in the mountains of Vermont.
Matt and Susie were friends for eight years, and a romantic couple for one. Lately, they’d been discussing marriage, so Matt was confident that when he proposed, the answer would be yes. He even asked Susie’s parents for permission before he asked Susie, and they were thrilled. Why wouldn’t they be? Their daughter was about to marry the most romantic man in the world!
Matt went to Susie’s Italian grandparents’ home in southern Vermont and found a beautiful granite rock on their property. He brought the rock home and had it engraved with the words “Assunta, ti amo. Mi vuoi sposare?” (Susie, I love you. Will you marry me?). The rock was even more special because Susie’s grandfather, whom she loved dearly, had died just a few months earlier.
The funny thing about Matt was he had always envisioned his marriage proposal would take place in a hot air balloon, with his intended gazing down on a field mowed with letters spelling out the magic words. But he decided the hot air balloon was too cliché, and that hiking to the summit of a Vermont mountain with his girlfriend would be even more symbolic and leave a more lasting memory.
The day Matt would propose to Susie was the one-year anniversary of the two of them becoming an official couple. The forecast was for warm and sunny weather, and Matt convinced Susie to take the day off from work and go hiking with him. Everything was going as planned, and the two departed for the summit of Mount Hunger, with the goal of arriving by noon.
On their way up, a woman passed them, and when they got to the top, there she was, taking pictures of the views. The woman approached Susie and asked her to take a picture of herself and her two dogs with her own camera, which meant a lot of fussing about how to focus and where the shutter release was located. Meanwhile, Matt wandered off to bring the aforementioned rock out of its hiding place. He returned to the impromptu photo session and asked the woman with the dogs and camera to take a picture of him and his girlfriend. He had a particular backdrop in mind, and he took his girlfriend by the hand and led her to it. That’s when Susie saw the rock, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Well, not quite. After a champagne toast, Matt prepared a gourmet lunch for the three of us: lobster tails and prawns poached in butter, over a bed of Caribbean mango salsa and snow peas, garnished with sautéed leeks. And he cooked it all right there on the summit, while Susie, who was still in a daze and sporting a dazzling engagement ring, sat with me and together we marveled over Matt’s culinary expertise.
Susie wasn’t overly chatty, but she sure did smile a lot. Truth be told, I don’t think she was all that surprised that Matt proposed, but she was certainly caught off guard by his methods. A few clues left around the house—Italian translations on post-it notes absent-mindedly left on the computer, an unusually large daypack, that sort of thing—would have alerted any curious mind, but the rock and the venue had pretty much left her speechless.
So there I was, eating the best meal I’ve ever had on a hike, with a view that topped any view Vermont’s restaurants have to offer, in the company of the most romantic man and the luckiest woman I have ever met, sharing food and company, celebrating life and love, looking forward to the future, and feeling truly inspired.
It was time for me and my dogs to get going so Matt and Susie could enjoy their moment on the summit alone. I had a story to write, and by the time I got to the bottom it would all be worked out in my mind. As I started down, a thought suddenly occurred to me and I yelled back to Matt and Susie:
“Hey! Don’t forget the rock!”
—Kate Carter
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matt and the rest of the men in my family...
Matt is my cousin, and let me tell you that he isn't just a romantic. Him and the rest of the men in our family have genuine hearts- full of goodness, kindness and integrity. What more could anyone ask for?