The Bucket List

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A couple months ago, Mousewords asked me to write a bucket list. I’m sorry that it’s taken so long. >_<

A bucket list is taken from the movie of the same name, and answers the question, “If you found out you had a year to live, what would you do with it?”

In the movie, the money is provided by a rich donor who also has a year to live, but no idea what to do with the year, so I’m not counting cost here.

I think the first thing I’d do is to move back to North Carolina. New York is a nice state, but it’s not home, and especially in these months that should be spring but are still winter up here, I miss home.

I’d get a house, one that was big enough to dance in, and with enough yard to run in.

I would encourage my husband to follow his dreams. To find something and even someone, who would make him happy. I’ve been very blessed being married to him, I can truly say he is the one person that my soul connects to, and I would hope that he could find someone else to love him dearly.

Then I would travel. I would take my older son out of school, and the four of us would go to all the places I’ve always wanted to see.

First, across the US, stopping at all the battlefields along the east coast, learning US history by being there.

We’d go see the Liberty Bell, I’ve always wanted to, driven by it many times as we drive down the coast, but I’ve never gone to see it.

I’d go to DC and let Ken take the boys, then spend a whole day in the Library of Congress, exploring books to my hearts content.

We’d go to Charleston, where we spent our honeymoon, and ride in a horse-drawn carriage on a tour of the town. Then we’d stop on Market Street and I’d buy one of the sweetgrass baskets that I enjoyed watching them make during our last visit.

On across the US, stopping at all the landmarks that I’ve wanted to visit but haven’t gotten to yet. We’d visit Lincoln’s birthplace in Illinois, since my 5 year old loves the story of Lincoln and the footprints on the ceiling. We’d go see Mount Rushmore, and ride in a barge down the Mississippi river.

In New Mexico, we’d stop at an adobe and look inside. The houses fascinated me the first time I saw one, and I want to visit one. I also want to learn how to tap water out of a cactus, something I’ve wanted to learn since I was a child. My older son has also inherited his Mom’s love of rocks, so a stop at the Petrified Forest would be on my list too.

In California, we’d work our way up the coast, after a stop in San Diego. From my first visit there, Point Loma has been the place where I’d like to retire to someday, so I’d stop there and look once more at the house I’d picked out there. Then up the coast, not forgetting to stop and let the boys try their hands at gold mining.

By this time we should all have our passports, so time for the world tour. Greece would be my first stop, I’ve loved everything about the country since I first heard the Greek myths, probably around the time I started school. I suspect I could easily spend more than a year there, exploring the country and islands, but highlights would be seeing the Parthanon and other ruins, seeing what I could of Mount Athos (translated Holy Mountain) and the monasteries there (since I’m not male, I wouldn’t get to see much, but the Byzantine era has always fascinated me, and the first monasteries here were built then) and the Roussanou Monastery built on the side of a mountain.

After Greece, we’d explore the rest of Europe, stopping in Paris to visit the Louvre and in England to see the Tower of London and Brighton Beach, two of my favorite places from my last visit.

Back over to Germany to visit friends and ride on the Autobahn, and then to Hungary, which, the first time I saw it, when it was still behind the red curtain, seemed to be one of the most beautiful and saddest countries I’d ever been to.

Budapest at Night by uzo19

By the way, my husband despairs of my knowledge of geography, so I know I’m jumping all over the map here. Sorry about that.

Thanks to Herman Wouk’s books, Winds of War and War and Remembrance, and Ayn Rand’s We the Living, I’ve wanted to visit Russia for years. I’m not sure what I would be looking for there, but I think that I would find it.

A quick visit in China, and a stop at Hong Kong to see friends, and then on to Africa. I want to go on a safari at least once, to see the animals that I’ve only seen in zoos living in the wild.

I’m skipping a lot of countries I know, but last would be to Australia, to meet in person some of the great friends I’ve made online, and to see a kangaroo for reals, and then back home to NC.

I am not a stay at home person, perhaps especially when I’m sick, so outside of trying to find the time to write every day (I have a half written novel that I’d love to finish, and would write a letter to both boys) I would still be on the go. Up to the mountains of NC, to mine for gems, and give the boys a sense of some of their roots. Up in the NC mountains, life is a bit different. When the settlers first headed into the mountains, they were just off the boats from England and Scotland. For years, the roads into the mountains were so bad that even cars had trouble making it and truckers hated the route. So, that area was closed off from the world in a lot of ways. Even in the 1970’s the language spoken there was considered the purist form of the Queen’s English in the world. If you’d like an idea of what life was like up in the mountains, I highly recommend Christy by Catherine Marshall.

I can’t imagine a bucket list for me that didn’t include visiting the Blue Ridge Parkway. For many years, before I got married and moved away, the parkway was my hideout, my thinking spot, my refuge. I still recall coming down from Devil’s Courthouse one day as the fog was lifting over the greenery and I could imagine that this was like the first day looked like to the first man.

Devil’s Courthouse is a cliff where legend has it, a local Indian tribe would test guilt by pushing people over the cliff. If they were innocent, the winds would blow them back up, if they were guilty, they would plummet to their deaths.

I’d camp out once again in Graveyard fields, where boulders big enough to lay on dot the treeless expanse. Tree stumps that resembled gravestones used to cover the area, but fires cleared the stumps and now it is a beautiful hike, with blackberries and blueberries to be picked in the spring.

I’ve always been fascinated with legends and myths, I grew up reading the Carolina ghost books of Nancy Roberts, who I actually got to meet when I was helping my Dad one time. One of NC’s oldest legends is Devil’s Tramping Ground. Located in the middle of a forest, it is a 40 ft circle where nothing grows, and hasn’t for at least 100 years. Supposedly this is either the place that connects hell to the earth, where the devil comes out when he’s causing some mischief, or it’s the place where the devil goes to think up new mischief and he walks in a circle as he thinks, causing everything within that circle to die. Legend also has it that anything put in the circle over night will be gone the next morning.

At night, I’d teach the boys to play cards. I think a lot can be taught with cards, with games ranging from Old Maid to Poker. How to lose well and how to win better are two important lessons. Cards also teach you to trust your instincts, read others’ body signals, and how to stand up for yourself (don’t believe me? Lay down the best hand at poker when someone is trying to steal the pot).

Finally, I’d teach them to fish. Fishing demands quiet, time for discussions and introspection, time for listening to others, yourself, and God. Things that little boys, especially, need to learn.

Then, with only the regrets of not seeing my sons grow into men and my husband and I growing old together, I think I could die peacefully.

So now it’s my turn, who am I going to pick to write a bucket list? I pick Allan Cockerill, Ken Bramhall, Ange of Buzzing with Ange, Dr. Mani, Despil of Fractured Bloughts, and Oza Meilleur. I’m looking forward to reading your lists.