Our love story begins like many other classic romances: Dane gave birth to a chicken and Kate aced a standardized test. After that fateful week of medical training in northern Minnesota, it was all over. As wilderness guides, we were destined to reconvene the following summer.
We spent three months together within spitting distance of the Canadian border, taking day trips to Thunder Bay and drinking bottles of Kokanee in a field. In the fall, Dane moved to Oregon to be within a half-day’s drive of Kate’s college in Walla Walla, Washington. After two years, we were having such a good time seeing each another every other weekend that it only seemed natural that we should move across the county together and attend graduate school. So we did.
For two long years we labored in books at the humid bottom of the Midwest, until our young adventurous hearts couldn’t stand to be estranged from the West any longer. San Francisco loomed heavy and foggy on the horizon, promising curious employment and big-city living for these two outdoor nuts, and so we settled across the Bay in the town of Berkeley.