Yes, she said.

7 September 2003—This weekend Sarah and I went to the North Coast of California, about three hours from where we live, to celebrate the second anniversary of our relationship. Mendocino is a quaint little seaside town, best unwittingly known as the stand-in for Jessica Fletcher’s fictional Maine residence from “Murder, She Wrote.”

I’m not really a beach person, but the coast up and down Highway 1 is breathtaking, both for the rock formations on the coast itself and for the redwood forests just inland. It’s a fantastic place to be with the love of your life. Saturday we went for a hike among redwoods, ferns, and an ancient Coho salmon hatchery. Here’s the trail we were on:

We hiked for a few hours, and on the loop back, we stopped at a secluded bend in the trail where the stream we had been following disappeared into dense foliage:

There we sat down on a fallen tree, and I reached into my backpack for the anniversary card I had made for Sarah, on which I had written The Speech. I read it, then got down on one knee, pulled out the ring I had had made for her, and asked Sarah to marry me.

She said yes. There were many tears of joy. Sarah wept too.

I can’t describe how happy we are. Though there wasn’t a whole lot of suspense leading up to this moment, as everyone who knows us has seen this coming from the very start, it is a tremendous and beautiful feeling to have finally taken this step, promising to each other that we will be together for the rest of our lives.

Here she is, the person who makes me smile more than I could ever hope for, sporting something new on her finger:

Yep, that’s how I feel, too. I love you, Sarah. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you’re going to be my wife.