A Love as Great as All Outdoors
This Valentine’s Day, the Sierra Club is celebrating its role as Cupid.
“Our theme is love of the environment and love in the environment,” says Theresa Schilling at national headquarters in San Francisco, who has compiled accounts of couples who met at Sierra Club outings.
“We don’t want to seem like a dating club,” says Schilling. “What we are trying to plug is the sharing of values. People aren’t going to connect if they don’t have a love for the environment.”
Her matchmaker stories include a Pennsylvania couple who got married at a chapter meeting and an Alaska couple who married on a back-packing trip and requested donations to the Sierra Club as gifts.
Closer to home, Betsy Reifsnider and Bob Schlichting met several years ago at a Sierra Club meeting in Pasadena. He was looking for mountain-climbing companions, and Reifsnider was there as a conservation coordinator.
“Luckily, the Pasadena group had given away their last schedule of events, so I told him to call me and I would send him a schedule,” says Reifsnider.
“When he called, he suggested that I could deliver it to him over dinner instead. We were married less than a year later.”
Their plans for Valentine’s Day: “We’re going out to dinner, but first we’re going hiking.”
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
