Like the forests, which have supported John and Jean Warkentin for nearly all their lives, their love for each other grows daily.
With that love having been nurtured by mutual respect and a never-ending will to meet challenges head-on, the Gateway area couple will truly celebrate 60 years of marriage and a full and happy lifetime together on July 9, 2011.
Although life over the past six decades has not come without its bumps and bruises, they wouldn't change a day of it. The most important thing in their world is family and the inspiration they draw from their two children, four grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
Both John and Jean were born in 1932, and they met in 1949 at a Christmas party in Mission.
John held the hand of his future wife for the first time in early June of that same year, and on June 11, Jean's birthday, he asked her to marry him.
As an engagement gift, he gave her a watch, which she still wears today.
Entertaining themselves was simple back when they were dating, with their favourite activity being riding the ferry back and forth across Okanagan Lake all night in the moonlight.
On July 9, 1951, at the age of 19, they were married in Kelowna, where Jean had been living with her foster parents and looking after their younger children.
John had followed her there, and was working with Jacobson Brothers Sawmill as a faller. It was a skill he learned from his father as a teen, on the opposite end of a crosscut saw. The pair produced cedar shakes after falling giant trees with the long handsaw, which John now proudly displays on a wall in his carport. They would notch springboards into the trees, to stand on, and sometimes it would take them an entire day to fall just one tree because of its size.
While John learned from his dad how to cut down trees, he also learned about good work ethics.
"Dad was a big guy who never ran out of energy. If I got tired while we were sawing, all he had to do was look at me and I would get my energy back fast. I just had to keep going."
John followed Jacobson Brothers to China Valley near Falkland, where the couple made their first home and where their children, Melvin and Jaylene, were born.
He continued to work for the company as a faller for 20 years, and during that time, he estimates that half of his co-workers lost their lives in falling accidents.
Jean worried about her husband's safety every day, but says she put all her trust in the "good Lord." The job didn't make John quite as nervous.
"Falling trees was exciting. Every day and every tree was different."
John claims that up until just a few years ago, he was the oldest certified faller in British Columbia.
In February 1954, the family moved with the company to a mill camp in Beaver Valley near Horsefly where they lived in a two-room cabin furnished with a kitchen table, wood cook stove and a crib. During that summer, John built a proper home, and in the mid-1960s, switched from falling to working as a full-phase logging contractor for the company.
In 1968, Jacobson Brothers moved the operation to Soda Creek, where Jean pitched in with cooking meals for the logging crew.
Tired by the fast pace and rapid growth of his company, John broke ties with Jacobson in 1971 and moved his family and his logging equipment to 100 Mile House where he worked with his brother-in-law, Alek McKimmon, who owned trucks and a loader.
While John invested many years in the forest industry, he says it was not a job that he loved.
"It was a means to and end. Snow got ugly in the winter and we'd be shut down for cold snaps, and in the summer, we'd shut down and they'd take us away and make us fight forest fires.
"There were up and down days, and I don't think it's changed."
John says he had always hoped to be a teacher, but it was not in the cards, and now that his logging days are behind him, he continues to work with his dozer doing landscaping jobs.
Much of the couple's spare time is spent with their family and they say their greatest joys have been watching their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren grow up and do things they like to see them do.
The home John and Jean live in was formerly owned by their daughter and every nook and cranny holds fond memories of her children and happy times.
John and Jean have been involved with the church for all of their lives and fellow church-members are also regarded as part of their family.
"We have lots of good friends and good times through the church," says John. "The supreme being accounts for everything else that's good in our lives."
As the couple looks forward to spending their 60th wedding anniversary with friends and family at Horse Lake, they reminisce about their 50th, when they renewed their marriage vows in their church, attended by a complete wedding party and capped off with a reception at the 108 Community Hall.
Their next milestone celebration is not expected to be as grand, but will be meaningful.
"Our sixtieth will be a little more low-key," anticipates John. "We're looking forward to it."
