Yreka, CA is not the sort of town where 20-somethings move expecting to meet their future spouses. It sits in a beautiful zone, with Mt. Shasta to the south and the Klamath canyon country to the west. The town itself is a regional hub with box stores. Fire-prone scrub oaks threaten Yreka from the hills above. It’s hot.

Yet Kara and Tom took consulting jobs there separately, both pursuing careers in forestry. They talked often at work, quickly bonding over sliding down steep slopes while marking timber on salvage sales from 2017 fires. They had dinner at Kara’s apartment and kept asking each other if they wanted to have dinner the next evening too. Thoroughly enjoying eachothers’ company, the summer and fall passed quickly with hard work, surf trips and lounging.

Tom returned to snow work in WA that winter and Kara came to visit, skiing for the first time in her life. She was not a natural, but had heaps of fun. The next summer they lived in a cabin in the Scott Mountains outside Yreka and Kara continued to help Tom learn the ways of forest management. They bopped back to WA that winter of 2020 and then (fully unrelated to Covid) moved to MT where they wanted to settle in the same community year-round. The Flathead Valley was home for three and a half years.

Returning to Mt. Shasta in June 2023, they got engaged, a successful Tom surprise. The dodgy weather in the alpine made it nice and private. That fall, they lived in Tom’s truck, Tanya, visiting family and exploring the southwest.

Adding a dog to the family in the next few years is a shared goal. They hope you’ll be able to join this celebration in their new home of Eastern Oregon.