North to the Yukon, Day 9 – It’s a mountaintop, not a bucket list

The bikes are ready and waiting in the damp morning to start heading south and east toward home.

Howard and I have now completed Day One of the long haul back home to Nebraska and Texas. Today’s ride was excellent – we even saw some moose, and tomorrow’s ride takes us back through Jasper National Park. But there can be no denying that we are headed back toward the end of vacation and the return to the routine of regular life.

It’s popular to call big trips like this “bucket list” items – that is, things you want to do before you “kick the bucket.”

I hate that expression for a host of reasons:

• It implies that you have to hurry up and do lots of things before you die.
• It implies that you can do things once, check them off your list, and be done with them.  Like they are a responsibility.
• It implies that for many things, doing them once is all you need to do.

For me, I much prefer the term “mountaintop experience.” That captures the idea that something is special, maybe even unique. But not that you can’t go back there.  And it says that it is a big part of living, not a preparation for death.

This trip to the Yukon, southern Alaska, and the Canadian (and American) Rockies has been both a literal and figurative mountaintop experience. The literal part is pretty easy – we’ve been up, down, around and over mountains almost constantly for the last week. But it’s also been a metaphorical mountaintop as well. It’s been a chance to soak in the beauty of the world; to see how small so many things are when compared to things that are so big; to be able see, hear, feel and smell things at a level we don’t normally get to.  And it’s been a chance to go to places most people only dream of going because it’s just too far to go.

The most important reason for this not being a bucket list trip, however, is because this isn’t something I’m checking off.  It will be something that stays with me for a long time to come.  I still think about a backpacking trip I took with my older brother more than 35 years ago. It’s still with me. And I hope that I haven’t left these beautiful areas behind forever.  I want to come back to see the mainland of Alaska, and Canada’s Northwest Territories, and…. It’s not a check box, it’s an introduction.

So, no, this has not been a bucket list vacation for me.  But I have certainly been to the mountaintop.