In early April 2021, my husband Wes and I pulled out the good bottle of scotch and played a terrifying game.
The scotch was from Whitehorse, Canada. We bought it on a bikepacking trip in 2019 and only busted it out on the most special occasions (its last pour was in October 2021, in honor of Wes’s father who had passed).
The game was a gift from a close friend. In gifting it to us, she either wanted to see us get closer or divorce. Called {THE AND}, it’s a card game with blunt, provocative questions designed to inspire honest conversation and connection.
That time of year you can picture the light rushing back, filling our house with an evening glow that had been sorely missed during the confined pandemic winter of 2020. We sat on the couch near windows, surrounded by daylight that lit up our rocks glasses when placed on the coffee table.
The occasion? We were both fully vaccinated; two weeks after our second shots. The game?! We’d “played” it before and it hadn’t broken us up yet. That night we celebrated this profound life moment of experiencing a global pandemic coupled with the accelerated science and global systems that brought vaccines straight to our upper arms. We felt pretty ready for real conversation.
We pulled cards with questions like, “How does your early childhood influence our relationship?” and “What do you still love about me?”
Luckily, we both had plenty to say. We’re both pretty good about sniffing out inauthenticity, and the conversation wasn’t rushed.
A theme that came up from that night, as we were both toasting to this edge of our lives we found ourselves on — with a scary, uncertain time behind us, and another unknown of life post-vaccine ahead — was our shared desire to always grow.
When I met my husband over 10 years ago, he was into the gym. He’d run a quick 3-mile loop on an asphalt path next to his suburban fitness center in Sparks, Nevada, but aside from that he wasn’t a runner. He loved hiking and backpacking. He lifted.
At the time, I considered myself a runner, but hesitantly. I had the cred of having completed multiple half-marathons, but I was by no means terribly strong or fast. I also loved hiking and backpacking. I’d lifted a weight one time in college.
Our first dates were spent outdoors. In Alaska, I taught him how to cross country ski (he quickly surpassed me, annoyingly). In Sparks, we arranged an “adventure run.” We parked his car in downtown Reno, took a public bus back to Sparks, and ran on a bike path the 8 miles to downtown. It was the longest run he’d ever been on. We celebrated with beer and burgers.
When I moved to Reno, he introduced me to trail running. He’d been trying it more and more, and it seemed like it was a great fit, between his strength from lifting and cardiovascular fitness from hiking. Unfortunately for me, trails he considered flat, weren’t. And like I said before, I may have had pretty good endurance, but I wasn’t terribly strong.
Still, with the newness of the relationship, I stifled my heart trying to beat out of my chest. Or, rather, I waved him on ahead as I ran and then walked my way up the 1,700-foot elevation gain trail in the Mount Rose Wilderness that flanks Reno.
“Flat,” he said.
Over time, he became a full-on runner. I got fitter.
Fast forward 10 years, and Wes recently earned his personal trainer certification. He is starting to design programming for a few close friends and family members willing to be his first trial clients.
I’m newly interested in how fast I can get as a runner. I never was before, but life is long and I seem to only be getting stronger. Why not see what I can do?
When we were playing that game last year, Wes said that we don’t let the moss grow. What he appreciates about me and about us is that we’re always evolving in our lives. Yes, we do it in partnership. But we also maintain our strengths and interests individually, and support one another in growing.
For both of us, as individuals and as a couple, being outside together has been the backdrop for the rest of our lives. Or, rather, it’s been the unifying factor. There’s basically no other place either of us would rather be at any given time. We are currently taking steps in our lives to enable ourselves to be outside, more.
It’s what both pushes us — to become stronger, to go faster — and motivates us, to get deeper and more connected. Being outdoors presents us with some of our happiest moments, shared with one another, our family, friends, or just solo out there taking the world in. I think it’s pretty basic and elemental. But, it’s also romantic, in its own way.
This year, Valentine’s Day proper fell on a workweek night and a friend’s birthday. We are celebrating our “Valentine’s Day Observed” over this weekend. We are out of the good scotch now. Too many significant life moments and not enough booze, I suppose. We already got our booster shots, so that date night idea is out.
But we’ll get outside together somehow to celebrate. Maybe we’ll even play the terrifying game.