“Thinking about going here to celebrate our anniversary,” Michael texted me. I didn’t have time to read the rest of his message, so was left wondering what anniversary he was talking about. Up until today, we have never celebrated the anniversary of anything. Probably because we don’t even agree on when it was we actually started dating. That, and the fact that–in my opinion– anniversaries are something only married people celebrate.

A little while later, I read the rest of Michael’s message, which was simply a link to a picture posted on Facebook four years ago today. Michael isn’t in the picture. He’s the one behind the camera. But there I am, in front of the information desk at the North Carolina Arboretum, in a line up with the other people who had opted to attend the Meet-up that night.

“Oh, that anniversary,” I thought. The anniversary of the day we first met.

And so it was that Michael picked me up at work and together we drove over to the Arboretum. And that’s when I realized I had never before written the story of how we met.

So voila.

MeetUp.com was created shortly after 9/11 —  it’s a website that physically brings real live people together. You join the site, tell them the things you like doing, and they tell you what groups there are in your area that might be of interest to you. Writing. Pugs. Beer. Hiking. There’s a group for that. French conversation. Board Games. Reiki. There’s a group for that, too. Right here in Asheville. Not only that–this group actually meets. In person. Nearby. Remember when we used to meet people in person?

I first moved to Asheville just six weeks after finishing my first Camino (a 500-mile pilgrimage walk across Spain). Prior to that, I’d never considered myself a hiker. And honestly, I still wasn’t sure I qualified. But I was new to this city. And loved meeting people. And loved talking about the Camino. So I joined the Asheville Hiking Group, hoping to meet some like-minded souls.

Michael joined too. But we didn’t meet on a hike.

There was an exhibit on Wicked Plants at the Arboretum. The exhibit was inspired by a book of the same name, whose subtitle is, “The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities.” Having lived in Asheville a mere two weeks at that point, I would have never known about the exhibit had it not been for Sammy–one of the hike leaders of the Asheville Hiking Group. He put out an invitation saying, “If I don’t set it up as a Meetup, I’ll probably never get around to seeing it before it closes.” I signed up to go. So did Michael.

There is a fee to enter the Arboretum. But those that have yearly passes can take an entire car load in. So we all met in a nearby supermarket parking lot and got into the cars of those with passes. Michael and I were in the same car, but apparently I didn’t make much of an impression–he has no recollection of that car ride.

Being the social butterfly that I am, I talked to quite a few people while walking around that exhibit–which was just as fascinating as it sounds. We walked into what looked like a haunted Victorian house. Home of the Nightshade “family.” The dining room table was set for a banquet–with a feast of foods that could cause illness or death. Or were at one time thought to do so. The bathroom was filled with stinky plants–warding off humans, but attracting pollinators. There were drawers to open, cabinets to peer into, and mysteries to solve.

I have since learned that Michael and I have very different museum-viewing habits. I could spend hours in a place Michael can cruise through in twenty minutes. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that today, upon reliving our visit there, Michael told me we didn’t talk to each other until the last portion of the exhibit–the greenhouse. He had probably been standing there for a while waiting for everyone else to finish.

So in the greenhouse, we talked. Found out we lived near each other. Decided we should car pool to future hikes together. He sent me a friend request on Facebook, which I accepted. Then we didn’t see each other, let alone speak to each other, for 15 months.

For the next part of our story, click here.