In 2002, James Heartland found himself unexpectedly on Mount Shasta in northern California. There he fell into conversation with a young Japanese woman on a journey of her own.
"When I arrived, I didn't know what to do," Reiko Kanno recalls in Zushi, Kanagawa Prefecture, where the couple married last year and now live. "But I saw three men talking and went over to ask for advice. One of them was James."
The following year, Heartland returned again on sudden impulse, and while putting up his tent, wondered what had happened to her. When he turned around, there she was. "That was when I knew we were supposed to be together, that I was to love her completely and not hold anything back."