Our Bucket List

OUR BUCKET LIST

I looked at the horse. The horse looked at me. I looked at the paper in my hand.

Sign up for horseback riding lessons.

Technically, I had signed up for the horseback riding lessons. I just hadn’t actually gotten on the horse. Yet. My pedantic soul said that I had fulfilled my obligation, but in all fairness I knew that just signing up and not riding, would be a cop-out.

“Okay, let’s do this!”

*****

When Emile and I had decided that horseback riding lessons were a thing, we’d been staying at a cabin in the Rocky Mountains. It had been so peaceful and beautiful, surrounded by nature in all her glory. We had been sitting quietly on the back deck overlooking the valley, Emile enjoying his coffee, me my tea, listening to nature. It had been picturesque and tranquil locale—an amazing rental that we had gotten for cheap as a last-minute booking. We had been sitting, neither of us saying anything, just listening to the nature around use.

Whinnnny. Pffptpfptpfffp. Clomp, clomp, clomp.

Horses! I looked down, and on the trail below us was a solitary woman leading five horses through the forest.  She looked up, waved, and continued on her way.

“We should do that,” said Emile.

I looked at him, horrified.

“What?”

He’d smiled.

“Go horseback riding, of course.”

Still horrified, and not seeing any reason for smiling, I’d said, “Do you not see how big those things are?”

He’d laughed. “Emma, they are not that big. And look how gentle they are.”

I’d shook my head. “No thank you. You hear stories about them bolting, and the rider gets thrown, and they break their leg, and are left in the wild, no way get back to civilization, and get eaten by a bear.”  

Emile had burst out laughing.  

“What?” I’d asked, slightly annoyed at the fact that he found humour in what I considered an actual possibility.

“It’s not dangerous, Em. It’s just a trail ride.”

My gaze followed the woman as she disappeared around a turn in the trail.

“Until it isn’t,” I said.

“Okay,” he started, “if you go horseback riding, I’ll do something that you want.”

I’d looked at him, and smiled. “Like white water rafting?”

He smiled. “Deal.”

So, later that day we’d asked around and found the ranch where we were able to sign up for a trail ride. I had been skeptical (and scared witless), but as it turned out, it hadn’t been horrible. No one had been bitten or thrown by the horse, and nobody was mauled by a bear, so a win-win-win.

After I had been helped off the horse using a platform for the non-horsey set, I had watched how easily our trail leader, Janet, mounted and dismounted her horse, Gene. She was only about five feet tall, way smaller than her horse. She made it look so easy: foot in the stirrup, lift other leg up and over horse, and viola! on the horse. And when she was riding Gene she didn’t even have to grip the horn for dear life, like I had.  

“I wish I could do that,” I’d said to Emile, nodding towards Janet as she sprang into Gene’s saddle.

“We could take lessons when we get home,” he’d said.

I thought about our ride. Emile had looked fairly confident on his horse — he wasn’t one of the Cartwright brothers from Bonanza, but not too bad. I, on the other hand, had looked like every caricature of every newbie horse rider. Embarrassingly so.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” I’d said. And our bucket list had been born.

*****

And that’s what it had been — a good idea. It had languished at the top of our list never being fulfilled. Until today. I looked at my trainer, and the horse.

“Okay, so how do I get up on this thing?”

*****

We’d started our bucket list not long after the movie had come out. We weren’t old like the Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson characters, and neither of us was dying of a terminal illness, but the idea had intrigued us. We’d decided to each create our own list of things we’d like to do, compare lists, combine them, and settle on things we both wanted to do together. Fun things, like taking horseback riding classes. But there were rules. Nothing to do with work, like getting a promotion. Nothing mean-spirited, like taking down a Karen. Nothing normal, like have kids and get a dog. No, we’d decided that our list was going to be fun. And it had to be what we wanted to do. Together.

*****

“You’re sure about this?” Emile had asked me.

“One hundred percent,” I said.

We were standing underneath the roadway of the Boukrans Bridge, in South Africa, strapped into harnesses, looking out at the beautiful Boukrans River Gorge below. Emile was looking a little green.

“How far down is it?”

“Seven hundred and nine feet, or two hundred and sixteen metres.” I smiled. “No worries.”

Bungee jumping was on the list.  And, low-and-behold, here we were at the second highest bungee jump in the world. 

Emile had turned to Henri, the man whose job was to safely strap us into our harnesses, and asked, “What if I change my mind?”

Henri had just laughed. “Then we push you off!”

When we were planning the trip, I’d told Emile about a news story I had read.

“There was this woman who did a bungee jump at Victoria Falls, and her bungee cord broke. She landed in the crocodile-infested Zambezi River, broke both her arms, floated down the river until she could be rescued. It’s amazing! She lived, and none of the crocs ate her.”

Emile looked at me, horrified.

“Why are you telling me this?” he’d asked, voice incredulous. “What makes you think I want to know things like this?”

I’d laughed.  

“Well, it’s like in The World According to Garp, where they buy the house after the plane flew into it because the odds of something like that happening again are really slim. That’s my rationale. It’s already happened, so we’re good.”

He’d just shaken his head at me. “Before you told me that story, I hadn’t even considered the possibility that the bungee cord could break. So, thanks for the that. It's all I’m going to think about now.” He’d paused. “And crocodiles.”

But the bungee hadn’t broken. In fact, the jump had been awe-inspiring. When we had been hauled back to the bridge platform, Emile had hugged me.

“That was amazing!” he’d sad. “Thanks for making me do it.”

*****

The first horseback riding lesson had been almost anti-climatic. We’d trotted around the ring going no faster than the instructor, Beth, could walk. She wasn’t even striding, just leisurely strolling around and around holding the horse's bridle. It may not have gotten my adrenaline up after the lesson, but butt knew we’d done something different.

I didn’t remember feeling so sore when we’d taken the ride in the mountains. But, then again, I’d been younger, a lot younger.

Later that night, while soaking in a hot bath, I thought about the list.  

“It’s funny that the first thing on the list took so long to accomplish,” I said.

*****

South Africa had turned out to be a gold mine of adventures. Besides bungee jumping we had been shark-cage diving, climbed Table Mountain, gone on a big game safari,  It had been a wonderful, wonderful trip. No regrets.  

“You know,” I said, as we were sitting in the plane, heading home. “I don’t think that I would mind coming back here again.”

Emile had looked at me, surprised. “Really?”

“Yeah, I really like the country.”

We’d rarely considered revisiting a country once we’d been there because, well, there were so many other countries to visit. Why come back? The world was a big place.

*****

Horseback riding classes continued to go well. There were no falls, and there were no bites. Beth knew her stuff — mounting, dismounting, rein control, speeding up, slowing down, turning, and most importantly, developing trust between the rider and the horse. A-plus, all around.

“I don’t know why we didn’t do this sooner!” I said after the last class. I was certain I would be okay if all the cars in the world disappeared and we were forced to revert back to riding horses. Or if the rodeo came to town …

*****

Our bucket list contained a plethora of new skill sets. We’d taken a cooking class in Thailand, where we’d learned all about steaming rice instead of boiling it.

“Who knew?” I’d said.

“Game changer,” said Emile.

We’d taken a wine tasting class at an obscure winery in France.

“D’accord,” said Renee, our instructor and owner of the vineyard, “inhale while the wine rests in your mouth.” He made rude slurping sounds. “Experience the oakiness of the vintage. Swirl the wine in your mouth, so that all your tastebuds can immerse in the full body of the vintage. Then spit.”

Emile swallowed, looked at me, and said, “Spit?”

I tried to spit as delicately as possible into the silver spit bucket, and dabbed at my mouth.

“I think that’s just the way you’re supposed to do it.”

“I just paid a hundred euros for this, and I’m not supposed to drink the wine? I’m supposed to spit it out? Balls to that!”

He picked up his glass and took another sip, swallowing.

Renee was aghast. “Monsieur, we do not drink the wine, we evaluate it!”

Emile had shrugged, “C’est comme ça. I prefer drinking over spitting.”

And he downed the rest of the glass.

We’d taken archery classes in mountains.

“Where’d it go?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” said Emile, looking around.

Just then a deer poked its head from around the bales of hay surrounded the bullseye target, staring at us.

“Oh my God! Did I hit the deer?” a horrified Emile asked.

Buck, our instructor, had laughed.

“No. That’s just Bryan, our resident white tail. For some reason he likes to stand behind the target and scare the bejesus out of our archers.”

We’d learned how to snorkel in Costa Rica, learned how to drive motor scooters in Italy, and learned how to flamenco dance n Spain.

We’d travelled far and wide, seen so many fantastic sights, met amazing people, and were constantly in awe of the world we lived in.  

*****

Now, I was standing on the deck of the Endeavour of the Seas, waiting to board the Zodiac. It was chilly, and I was glad for the warm parka that the tour company had provided to me and each of the brave souls who had ventured through the Southern Sea to Antarctica.

*****

Emile and I had done most of the things on the our list. There were a few that we had decided were not going experience, like taking the Siberian Express across Russia, or a visit to North Korea. And there were others that were, well, impractical.

We’d been looking at the list one evening, deciding where our next adventure was going to be.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to do this,” Emile said, pointing at the paper where travel to space and experience weightlessness was written. That had been mine. I had imagined viewing the Earth from above. The photos of Earth from space were amazing. I could only imaging the thrill of seeing it with my own eyes.

“Really?” I sad, slightly disappointed.

“Well, unless you have a spare $20 million each laying around, I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

“True,” I said, “but just put brackets around it. Maybe there’ll be a price drop, like they have at Walmart.”

Emile put brackets around it, and drew a smiley face. He continued to look at the list.

“See the northern lights, check. Drink beer at Oktoberfest, check. Ring in the new year in Times Square, check. Visit New Orleans during Mardi Gras, check.” He looked at me. “We said we were going to hike Machu Picchu. But we took the bus.”

“Ah, but we did hike around the site.”

“True,” he said. “Check.”

*****

The one thing that we hadn’t done was visit all seven continents. We’d been to six out of the seven. Only Antartica had eluded us. Until now.

As we sped over the water towards the Antarctic peninsula, I smiled. It was the trip that we had kept putting off. But, better late than never, I always say.

Our pilot cut the engine and we grounded on the gravelly bottom of the cove. I waited until everyone was off the boat before disembarking. I looked around, awestruck. The bleak landscape coupled with isolation of the place was breathtaking. Jagged peaks rose above me, surrounding our safe harbour. Huge pieces of orphaned ice littered the beach, some the size of small houses, much of it an amazing turquoise.

“Well, Emile, we made it to continent number seven — Antarctica. Check.”

I opened the small box that I had been carefully cradling, and gently let his ashes float away on the wind.