This week I had the opportunity to do two things. I love to write and feel that no day should pass without putting a few words on a paper. Sometimes they are useful, other times not so much, but that doesn’t stop me. My Aunt Fern had the same problem, only her daily wish was to clean the kitchen and make the most delicious sugar cookies and she did both well. It was her calling. I’m in the middle of writing a book and if I could keep focused the book move along more smoothly, quicker, and probably I could avoid those icky rewrites.
The other choice was to have an adventure. Cowboy Bob and I decided to boat up or down, I get directions mixed up, the Missouri River, out of Lake Holter. It’s a dammed lake. That’s a joke. I was feeling like Sacajawea accompanied by Lewis and Clark, seeing the West for the first time. I was stoked. How beautiful that trip was.
Very few other boats and people were on the Missouri, making for a quiet time, when all of a sudden, a canoe, loaded with packs and sacks rounded the bend, and we met Howie. Howie was one of those guys who could be twenty or thirty or forty because he had sort of an ageless face. He was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, exactly what I had on, but his energy bounced off the end of his canoe paddle.
“Ahoy, there,” said I, because I like to say ‘ahoy.’ “Where are you going?”
“To Great Falls,” he answered. “Then I’m going to put the canoe up for the winter and start again when it warms up,” Howie said without blinking an eye.
We knew Great Falls was at least fifty miles from where we were, maybe more, and we were curious. “Where did you start?” Cowboy Bob asked. We were both thinking someplace a lot closer, maybe around the last bend.
He nodded and pointed toward the west, “The Pacific Ocean. May 22, it’s on my bucket list, but I’m headed for the Mississippi and then down to the Gulf, I have a way to go, but I’ll pick it up next May. Maybe to the Erie Canal if my paddle holds out.” By this time, he was pointing toward the east and in a splash of his paddle, he was gone.
Holy cow. Bucket list? He’s not yet fifty and he’s completing bucket list items. Today is Sept 22, meaning that he had been paddling for four months, which strikes me of a heck of a bucket list item. He had already paddled across Oregon, Idaho, and one-third of Montana. I like adventures but give me a break. I didn’t start my bucket list until I was near retirement, and I’m thinking I’d better get a move on, or I’ll be left behind. I wonder what Howie’s encore bucket list will be when he reaches fifty.
I salute all the Howie’s who are out there. Life is more than making sugar cookies, cleaning the kitchen, and mowing the grass. What’s on your bucket list? The cowboy and I are revising ours. But I put my foot down at naked grizzly bear hunting. It is definitely out!
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