Many Glacier, the 95-year-old log hotel on the south shore of Swiftcurrent Lake, is, it turns out, the most romantic place on Earth.
I listen to the ranger giving the historic tour. She saw the hotel when she was 10, visiting from Seattle. She fell in love with its treehouse grandeur, the lobby with its Douglas fir pillars, the stone fireplace you gather around like a campfire. She vowed to return. She has, every summer, as a visitor, then as a waitress, now as a ranger. “I met my husband here.”
Behind her, on the deck overlooking the lake, something is happening. A woman sits in one of the Adirondack chairs. A man kneels beside her. He opens a small, elegant box. “He’s proposing,” someone says. This is true. He offers a ring, the woman takes it, she is smiling and crying. They kiss. Now the man notices his audience. He stands up, he bows. Everyone applauds. Maybe at Glacier, love, like fir logs, is meant to endure.