Olivia Nicole Bergen was looking for a hiking partner. Then she saw Dr. Peter Berg Anderson’s “selfie in the mountains with green trees behind him,” she said, posted on his Bumble dating profile.
Dr. Anderson, a fellow New Englander, got a taste for hiking and camping as a Cub Scout and Eagle Scout while growing up in Westwood, Mass., a suburb of Boston. Ms. Bergen, who grew up in Southern Bow, N.H., explored the White Mountains with her family since age 7, and hiked harder trails with her father.
But, all they could muster in May 2020, after messaging a day or two, was a Zoom date, each with beers in hand, and a little dressed up, followed by another Zoom date a week later.
“Life was hard, it was the pandemic, said Ms. Bergen, 32, then an organizer and campaign manager for Cinde Warmington, who won a six-way race as executive councilor in New Hampshire that November.
“It was nice to have a social connection,” Ms. Bergen said.
Dr. Anderson, 38, who received a medical degree from Dartmouth, couldn’t agree more and was hopeful about their relationship.
“She laughed at my stupid joke about a woodchuck,” said Dr. Anderson, now a fifth-year resident in vascular surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. And, like him, she enjoyed J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” book and movie trilogies.
But the outdoors always beckoned.
“In 2017, before medical school, I hiked 1,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail,” he said. Her dream was to do a thru-hike of the trail from Georgia to Maine one day.
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After high school, Ms. Bergen hiked New Hampshire’s 15 to 20 peaks, many more than 4,000 feet, during a 20-day backpacking trip, and then studied overseas. (Over seven years, she hiked all 48 peaks rising 4,000 feet.)
She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in political science from N.Y.U.’s Abu Dhabi campus in the United Arab Emirates, and earned a master’s degree in China studies from the Yenching Academy international scholarship program at Peking University in Beijing.
Ms. Bergen now works in Rochester, Minn., as an organizer at two nonprofit community advocacy groups, ISAIAH and Faith in Minnesota.
In mid-June 2020, they braved the outdoors with a picnic at Clark Lookout, with a view of Lake Sunapee and Mount Sunapee — halfway between her place in Manchester, N.H., and his in Lebanon, N.H.
“Wow, she’s very attractive,” Dr. Anderson recalled thinking when he first saw her in person.
As they sat on the blanket along a stonewall, she quickly won him over with a box of Oreos, which she considers a good hiking snack, along with water. Afterward, they stopped at Quack Shack nearby for ice cream.
Later that month, they hiked Black Mountain in Jackson, N.H. She brought along her homemade Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies, called “Choreos,” and they had their first kiss at an overlook.
Dr. Anderson, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music history analysis from Northeastern, plays guitar, trumpet, piano and banjo, and until 2017, he performed at various gigs.
After their hike, they went to Dr. Anderson’s home, where he picked up his guitar and played “Here Comes the Sun,” her favorite Beatles song. They began singing and harmonizing on the spot. It was like “something out of a movie,” Ms. Bergen said.
The next day, Ms. Bergen confessed to a friend, “I’m head over heels about this new guy.”
The two quickly entered each other’s Covid bubble and sometimes made pancakes one at a time on his kitchen hot plate.
“That Christmas I bought him an electric griddle,” she said, with a laugh, and pancakes and crossword puzzles eventually became a Sunday morning ritual.
Soon, Ms. Bergen had her heart set on a five-month solo 2,200-mile thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, starting in Springer Mountain, Ga., in May 2021.
From January to April 2021, each weekend, Dr. Anderson accompanied her on grueling local wintry trails and gave her tips on how to carry a heavy backpack over mountains and where to hang food in trees away from bears.
“He came in treacherous, intense weather, with crampons and ice axes,” she said. “That was awesome.”
During her five-month trek, they texted daily over Signal.
“It was exciting to relive it,” he said, as he finished up medical school and headed to Rochester, Minn., for his residency, especially “a spectacular sunset at Max Match in North Carolina,” he said, “a little wishing I was there.”
In November, when she moved to be with him in Rochester, he greeted her with tickets to the community Handel’s Messiah singalong at St. Olaf Catholic Church in downtown Minneapolis, now a yearly tradition.
In August 2024, on the last day of an Alaskan cruise vacation, he got on one knee and proposed with a moissanite ring in their stateroom, near College Fjord.
On Jan. 21, Netti Phang, a Universal Life minister, officiated a legal ceremony at ThaiPop, a Thai restaurant in Rochester, with two friends serving as witnesses.
Three days later, Ms. Warmington, the bride’s former employer, led them in their vows before 91 guests at the Publick House Historic Inn in Sturbridge, Mass.
“Growing up in New England and now living in Minnesota, we aren’t afraid of snow,” said Ms. Bergen, but they were grateful the snowstorm held off another day for their guests.
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