Love Token

I told my boyfriend I dreamed of a 'green' engagement ring. Could he deliver?

(Illustration by Kim Rosen)

I'd heard too many stories of women living on the edge of a nervous breakdown, waiting for a proposal and getting angry at every missed opportunity. I didn't want to be that way. And for a long time, I wasn't. I was in no rush to get engaged and was pretty sure it would happen.

But by June of last year, months and months (and months) after Will and I had talked about getting married - and gone over all the practicalities of two independent grown-ups merging lives - I started to get frustrated. By the second-to-last day of our vacation on a tiny Canadian island in Georgian Bay, right after I'd turned in a book manuscript (the perfect time for a celebratory event), it still hadn't happened. I'd kind of given up.

The problem? Will was stymied. He knew (because he'd asked) I wanted an ecofriendly engagement ring. Diamond and metal mining can be devastating to the environment and the people involved, so conventional rings are usually extremely un-green. But he had no idea what to do about it. He'd looked online and found little guidance. His friends who'd bought engagement rings were mostly in the get-her-a-big-rock-and she'll- be-happy school. He thought about vintage rings but knew I had weird issues about bad relationship karma - you never know why that ring was sold. (Yes, I realize I'm high-maintenance.) The solution he finally came up with couldn't have been more beautiful.

Unbeknownst to me, while we were both supposedly supposedly working on repairs at the island's old boathouse, Will was carving me a wooden ring. Not from a chopped-down branch, either - he found a birch log near one of the docks that a beaver had discarded, so he didn't have to disturb any animal's habitat to get it. He later told me he really thought about all this stuff . He didn't want any part of the ring's greenness called into question.

Maybe my suspicions should have been aroused when he examined my hands one night before we went to sleep, but I was too mad at him. Besides, there is nowhere anywhere near the island to buy jewelry, and he is not the jewelry-carving type. Or so I thought.

On our last night at the island, we went for a sunset boat ride. He suggested packing a picnic and wine, but I - in no mood to be romantic - threw together a practical dinner out of leftovers. (Not wasting food is green, at least.) Just as the sun was making its way toward the horizon line, which has a way of improving my mood no matter what the circumstances, Will asked me to marry him and presented me with a small box wrapped in birch bark. We both got a little teary - I'll keep the details of his proposal between us - and I said yes. Even as all that was going on, I couldn't help but wonder what was in that little box. My answer wasn't contingent upon the contents, but hey, I'm a girl. I wanted to open it.

He had found a vintage jewelry box in a closet in a cabin on the island and filled it with a bed of pine needles. Resting on the needles was a light-colored wood band, sanded so meticulously it was almost shining. He slipped it onto my pinky finger (his size estimate was just a wee bit off ), and I loved it. I don't think I would have stared at it more if it had been a 4-carat sparkler.

Back in Boston the next day, I started sharing my news. Most of the women I told at a party that night grabbed my hand to look for new hardware - and, initially, the reaction tended to be disappointed surprise. "Oh! It's . . . wooden. Huh." Once they heard the story, though, they came around.

Will and I were married in May, and at our ceremony he had another surprise for me. He'd kept a small piece of the birch log, and he'd carved two more bands from it for us to exchange. They aren't durable enough to wear every day (neither is my wooden engagement ring; I wear that on a necklace), so we also exchanged our "real" bands, made, of course, from responsibly mined platinum.

Christie Matheson is the author of Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style. Send comments to coupling@globe.com.

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