Today is the day.

We sleep in. Drink coffee and hot chocolate in camp. Watch the sun rise in a cloud- free sky. Dawdle some more. No hurry, right? It's late September, and there shouldn't be much demand for campsites. I was wrong...the traffic on the lake was very high, all things considering. I think I counter 14 canoes the first day. 

We were lucky to get a campsite on Disappointment, the same lake we stayed at the first night. Almost all the sites were taken (we had arrived late at night and taken the first available). We spent some time wondering why we had tried to upgrade campsites, as the site we found wasn't much better than the one we left. 

But--and this is a BIG but--our site faced north. During the day, we trolled some rapalas with no success. We did find lots of driftwood, so we picked up a bunch. It was a good thing we did.

Fire started. Dinner eaten. Proposal accepted. All is good in the world.

And then the northern sky lit up with some aurora borealis. Not much of color, but there were hours and hours of waves of white northern lights with some greens mixed in. We eventually put out the fire, went down on the rock point, and watched the waves in white and green wash over us. Mixed in with the northern lights were numerous shooting stars.

Maybe others of you married folks have had such amazing experiences on the day/night you got engaged, but a night in the BWCA, perfect unseasonably warm weather, green and white northern lights washing over you interspersed with multiple shooting stars...I can't imagine a better setting for such a night. Magic and miracles and grace. Nights like that are a beneficence.