I first visited Cannon Beach along the Oregon coast on March 27, 2021 – it was still the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I was alone. I spent a total of four hours there: an hour sitting in the surf and feeding seagulls, and three hours waiting for AAA to send a truck to help me after I accidentally locked my keys in the car in the remote beachtown.
I met Noah a couple months later while visiting family in central Ohio. We spent our first date in a bookstore. I was hooked, but we went our separate ways. Him, home to Columbus, and me to the airport, where I caught a series of flights and sleds back to my apartment in northern Alaska. Our relationship remained in limbo, because we didn’t want to start ‘something’ while we lived on opposite edges of the world.
I visited Cannon Beach again in June 2023, but this time with Noah in tow.
He had left central Ohio behind – permanently, we thought at the time – to live with me on the west coast. We lived north of Seattle, but made regular trips exploring the PNW, visiting Portland, Oregon, driving across the border to Vancouver, British Columbia, hunting vampires in Forks, Washington, hiking in the North Cascades and Olympic national parks.
That day in June, we spent two hours on the beach enjoying the waves, exploring tidal pools and collecting seashells. It was just a pit stop on U.S. 101 on our way to Portland, but it was the best part of our day.
We moved back to central Ohio in late 2023. Noah’s working on his PhD at THE Ohio State University and I’m at The Reporting Project, happy to be doing what I love in my hometown.
And together, we visited Cannon Beach on March 29. It was nearly four years to the day from the first time I set foot on the beach. We wandered all over, taking in the sunny skies and waxing poetic about the last time we visited the beach together.
And then I turned around, and Noah, my partner and best friend for the last four years, was down on one knee.
Of course I said yes.
Have a Bright Spot to share? Send it to Managing Editor Julia Lerner (lernerj@denison.edu). Tell us about the moment that made you smile in under 200 words, and try to include a photograph. We’ll add it to our growing list of Bright Spots on TheReportingProject.org!