It started with a canoe nobody could steer.

We met the summer after college at a camp on Long Pond that belonged to a friend of a friend. Ava was there for the weekend. Nathan was there because he had nowhere else to be.

The first thing we ever did together was fail, badly, to get a canoe across the pond in a headwind. It took forty minutes and we ended up two coves down from where we meant to be. Ava has told that story at every family dinner since.

We spent the next eight years living in Boston, coming back up to that same pond every August because neither of us could quite let it go.

Two summers ago, on the drive home from Acadia.

Nathan planned it for a year and then did it eleven days early because he could not stand holding onto the ring any longer.

It was a Thursday in September, it was 54 degrees, and it was raining hard enough that we had pulled the canoe up on the shore. He asked on the dock, soaking wet, and forgot every word he had written down.

Ava said yes before he finished the second sentence.

We could have done this in Boston, where we live, and roughly nobody would have had to book a hotel.

But every good thing that has happened to us happened on this pond, and we wanted you all to see it. Thank you for driving. Thank you for flying. Thank you for taking Friday off.

We will make it worth the trip.