This Blog: We do it together — Stuck in North Idaho

What is marriage? I think about this question a lot, probably more than Andrea knows, and likely not enough. The answer seems easy, right? Marriage is a union of two spouses, a legal arrangement and mutual faith that life should be spent together.

But I often think about the parts of a marriage, the day to day reality. Ours is working, sometimes so hard that we come home cranky and have to drink a beer or a glass of wine to relax. We work so we can pay for our house, feed Juneau and ourselves and occasionally have some fun money for a date night or a road trip. We do it so I can graduate with no student debt. Andrea spends her spare time getting involved in the community, helping with Distinguished Young Women and serving as a board member for the North Idaho Center for the Literary Arts. We both believe in regular exercise. Each of these things is a priority, so we are constantly juggling. After all of this the question is, how do we interact in each others lives in a way that makes us more than just roommates?

The answer is evident in this blog. When Andrea started SINI the intent was to inform locals and visitors of some cool things to do in the Pacific Northwest. But it has grown into the ongoing story of high school sweethearts living life, raising a fine dog and discovering their passions. Now, without the blog we would still be doing the same things, because it’s in my nature and Andrea strives to be more adventurous.

But the photos we take, the stories Andrea writes and the video footage I get on these adventures is what really helps me see what our marriage is like. It’s not all happy. Sometimes when I look at footage I remember how we were arguing just before the camera rolls. Sometimes it feels like we are just going through the motions on our hikes, particularly when we’ve been there before. Sometimes Andrea gets really down about the blog because she feels like, what’s the point?

The point, if we never inspired a single reader to go out and explore, if we never landed a single freelance gig, and if we never had the perfect adventure, is that we have the proof of what our marriage is built on, what it looks like. For posterity, we have photos of the smiles and the sweat, stories of the fear and joy, and videos of the sights we see. When we hike or travel, we never know what we’ll come across, but we do it together.I’ve been sitting on this footage from our road trip to Oregon for over a month now. I had planned on including narrative with this video to change things up a bit. But after watching the clips again and again I realized that they tell their own story. So I paired it with Ed Sheeran’s song Photograph instead. I hope you enjoy watching as much as I did editing.

Sheeran, Ed. (2014). Photograph. X (Deluxe Edition) [DIgital]United States: Asylum Records, Atlantic Records