Engage

A couple weeks ago I got engaged to a sweet young lady. I have been slow to write anything about the ordeal however, and want to write something about how I proposed to her.

My family has owned a piece of property in Marriot-Slatterville for around a decade. It is 20 acres of lush fields boardered on all sides with trees, particularly in the back. We have had several horses and cows living on there the entire time. It is a wonderful place.
A few weeks ago though, the floods came. This particular area of ground has been his with the worst floods in all of Utah this year--or so the news reporters say. The Governor even came out to visit with the 8 neighbors in houses bordering our property and promise them assistance. Of the 20 acres of lovely fields, approximately 16 acres are buried under between 1 foot and 6 feet of water. It got so bad at one point that I could be standing in water and touch our barn, but luckily the water has yet to touch the sandbags we set up to protect any of our buildings.
We have always had two ponds at our ranch and would use both for watering animals and spraying the pastures to keep growth up, but this year our two ponds, on opposite ends of the ranch, are one giant lake.

My fiance and I have been talking about getting married for quite some time. We went shopping for a ring, and we have been discussing things related to preparing for marriage. We both knew we wanted to get married and made it pretty evident that we would be getting engaged very soon. I told her that I was going to surprise her in how I asked her, and that I might throw out a few "false alarms" to get her hopes up and always keep her guessing.

The night of the 29th, she was engaged to come to my place and spend the evening with me. I told her that I wanted to make a bonfire out back and ride around on my canoe while the fields were flooded. Then the weather went sour.
It was raining the days before and the days after, the weather man said that it might be at the peak of its worst on the night of the 29th, and that got me really worried. I ran over a few back-up plans in my mind, but none of them seemed fitting. We would either be indoors watching it rain, bored out of our minds, or we would get soaked in the monsoon of water. --that's when it hit me:: we COULD get soaked in the water! My fun side found that appealing for some reason, but I knew it wouldn't be proper to get her drenched and then ask her to marry me, so I taped my creative side and came up with a solution.

I found a tent pole from one of our camp tents and fixed each end of the pole onto each end of the canoe. I then found three flexible plastic rods and attached them on the front of the canoe making a sturdy rib cage over the front half of the canoe. Using a fresh sheet of drop-cloth plastic like they use to protect houses and furniture from paint spills, I covered the front half of the canoe and protected it from the rain. It was also semi-opaque plastic, which made it convenient to see through though not everything could be seen.

I told myself that now that I build that canvas cover, we would go out onto the lake no matter what, unless there were lightning. I informed my fiance of this and persuaded her that it would be very fun. When the evening came on the 29th, we had diner with my family and the weather had calmed down. As usual the weather man was significantly off, because the height of the storm was a few days earlier and there was only a minor shower in the afternoon of the 29th.

After diner we set off to my beloved ranch to play. When we started, there wasn't any rain and it made it perfect to push off into the water. Our canoe was loaded with a small amount of firewood, newspaper, my backpack full of treasure, and a sack with plastic bowls and candles. Whatever explanation I provided for her about why we were bringing the bowls and candles sufficed because she didn't seem to make anything of it.
We set out on a tour around the lake. It was a very lovely night, the sun hadn't quite gone down and I wanted to stall, so having plenty of interesting things to see helped with that. Right now there are hundreds of varieties of birds hanging out at our lake, plus a few fish have swam up stream and into our lake, making a splended ecology. I have even seen dragonflies hovering around, which is a good sign of a healthy environment.
When the sun was just about to duck beyond the mountains, I pulled out the bowls and candles and asked for her assistance. "My mother wants me to see if these candles will float in these bowls, do you want to help me?" of which she agreed to assist me in lighting and putting them out into the water. I made a circle of floating candles around the canoe and then let out the anchor in the center of them. With a few of the remaining candles, I asked if she wanted to see if we could heat up a few marshmellows. By that point there was a slight mist hovering in the air and I wasn't certain that it wouldn't start pouring.
Since everything was loaded into the front of the boat, I had to ask her to send my backpack up, where the lighter and marshmellows were, and using our hands, we held the marshmellows over the tiny candles to great effect in melting them. After a couple marshmellos the sun was finally down and the candles were glowing orbs floating in the darkness. If there weren't clouds I am sure the stars were just as majestic.
I asked if she wanted another mashmellow and reached inside the backpack full of treasure. Instead of a marshmellow, I pulled out the real treasure, opened the lid and showed it to her. Upon looking at it, I asked her if she would marry me.
She was speechless. This entire time she didn't recognize that she was assisting me in setting up for the climax of the evening. She told me yes and hugged me as best as we could, floating in a rocky canoe with a brace in the center separating one half of the boat from the other.

It began to rain shortly after and thanks to the pre-described canvas I built, we did not get wet. We pulled up the anchor and waited until we drifted to shore, along with a few of the candles. Most of the candles however, sank to the bottom of the lake where they will need to be retrieved once the water abates. When we made it to shore, we rushed into the building where there is an upstairs room and window to gaze out and watch the rain for a while, examining the ring in the dry and in the light.

It was a wonderful evening. I am glad that it happened.