Woman Finds Stranger Who Offered Her Hiking Boots for a Wedding Day Hike

Eighteen years ago, two women who shared a fleeting-but-meaningful moment together in Sedona, Arizona, recently connected in the most modern of ways: via Facebook. Anne McGowan was recently reminiscing about her wedding 18 years ago when she came across a photograph that marked a pivotal point on that day: one that shows her sitting on the back of a pickup truck in her wedding dress while another woman with her back to the camera, a stranger, is removing her hiking boots beside her.

According to local paper AZ Central, McGowan recalls how she and her husband Mark had to hike Doe Mountain in Sedona, as part of their wedding after wildfires forced them to find a new spot for their outdoor nuptials. The only problem was McGowan was wearing a pair of heels, which weren't exactly friendly for the arid soil and desert conditions.

The way McGowan remembers it, a woman who happened to be coming off the trail at the same time happily lent her socks and boots to the bride so that she and Mark could make their way up the trail to get married. In the whirlwind excitement of the day, however, McGowan failed to ask the woman for her name.

So 18 years later, McGowan decided to see if there was a chance to connect with the kind stranger who had saved her wedding day so many years ago. She shared the photograph to Facebook, where it was circulated thousands of times. Meanwhile, Rhonda Nelson, who had been working in a medical program on the Navajo Nation in Fort Defiance, was made aware of the photograph by a few loved ones. Nelson's sister-in-law, daughter and best friend reached out, convinced that the woman in the photo was none other than Nelson.

---

FOR YOU

The Sweet Love Stories of Our Favorite Soccer Players

These relationships are *pitch* perfect.

An Exclusive First Look Inside Tommy Winkler's Wedding

An exclusive first look inside TikTok star Tommy Winkler and wife Jessica Pappas' "whimsical, European spring garden" wedding.

Lainey Wilson Discusses Her "Western" Wedding Vision

In an interview with The Knot, the country singer discussed her nuptials to the former NFL player.

According to AZ Central, Nelson thought she recognized the sunglasses perched on the woman's head and even the outfit, down to the dirt that was visible on the back of the woman's short. (She remembered hiding the stain when she went to dinner with her husband following their hike.) Could the woman in the photo really be her?

Nelson reached out to McGowan via Facebook, explaining how she wasn't sure if she was the woman in the photo, but a lot of her closest friends and family seemed to think so. She shared her shoe size—8—which checked out, as did the timing of her return from the hike that day (Nelson recalls it was late when she and her husband finished the hike, and there is a moon rising in McGowan's photo.)

Bob Coates Photography

To further verify whether she was the woman in the photo, Nelson sent McGowan several photos of herself from that same time period, and McGowan confirmed it was, indeed, the woman who had so selflessly helped her out that day. Even after her gratuitous gesture, Nelson didn't even remember lending a stranger her boots that day, which is why she couldn't quite figure out whether the woman in the photo was her.

"The most interesting thing is an action that one person took—and has mostly forgotten—has such an imprint on another's experience and memory," Nelson told the paper. "As we go through life, we never fully comprehend the effect our actions have on others' lives and experiences."

McGowan extended her gratitude to Nelson for helping make her wedding day possible, telling her, "That small act of kindness was not just at that moment."

The paper reports that Nelson extended an invitation to McGowan to go hiking with her in Washington state, where she now lives, and where she now works with the Tulalip Tribes.