A tale as old as time. You know how it goes. Girl meets boy. Boy wants more information on composting. Girl emails boy said information. Boy never responds. Two years pass. One gloomy January day, a close friend and owner of a local watering hole, Aly Sanguily, asks Ali if she’s single. She’s got this guy that comes to the bar often and he’s great. A Facebook message pops into Ali’s unknown folder, and sure enough, Matt would like to get together to have that talk on composting and recycling after all. Four years and zero formal composting educational sessions later, and we’re getting hitched.

Our favorite spot to hike in Carbondale is Red Hill. It takes you from the base of town, up above it all, to a beautiful view of Carbondale and Mount Sopris. A red rocked landscape, filled with juniper trees and pinyon pines along the way. Some of our biggest growth conversations have been along that trail. We began hiking mid day, and I heckled Matt about when we were getting engaged most of the way up. Not because I needed to get married, but because I could no longer handle knowing there would be a surprise, but not knowing when. We made it to the top, talked about the last year we’d had together, and acknowledged that through even the toughest of times, we are always better together. Matt popped the question, I said yes (duh), and we laughed the whole way down about how relieved he felt when I was asking about getting engaged on the way up, because he knew I truly had no idea he was about to ask.