We're Too Old Not To Give Yourself Your Bucket List Gifts Before It's Too Late

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

I’ve always wanted to see the aurora borealis. I finally did it. What’s on your list?

The Aurora Bayside Inn really does have the best views in this Northern Territories town. While I’d love to be in the prow part of this house, the little lit cabin to the left is where I am staying. This place, in remote but very active Yellowknife, Northern Territories, Canada, brags the best and most visible aurora borealis anywhere.

It’s almost mid-October. Already all the leaves are gone, as I saw driving in from the tiny airport. My driver was from Zimbabwe, the next taxi driver was Eritrean. Nearly all the low-wage workers in town are Sikh or Indian. It’s fascinating, this tiny hamlet that began as a gold mining town and is now a huge tourist draw, and immigrants are pouring in from the big Canadian cities to find work.

I didn’t expect it to be booming for real estate, but it is. I didn’t expect it to be so diverse, but it is.

The Aurora Bayside Inn is right on Great Slave Lake, one of many bodies of water where people fish, canoe and lift off for adventures skyward. In fact, in about forty minutes that’s precisely where I’m headed, for a floatplane trip around the area.

Yeah, let’s DO this.

Yesterday was overcast and I didn’t expect much. But come 8:30, one of the other AirBnB guests banged on my door to tell me that the lights had started. I leapt into my warmest stuff (it gets WAY down at night) and ran out.

I walked gingerly with him to the tiny wharf that was the viewing spot, ideally located facing east where all the windows let the lights dance in. Dawn, too, as I discovered. But I’m ahead of myself.

He pointed skyward. All I saw was white smoke…then I looked through his camera and saw the bright green. My eyes couldn’t see the colors, nor could my phone camera- but I could see the aurora dance through his camera lens.

“The other night it was so bright you could read by it,” he said excitedly.

Truth, I didn’t mind. All too often we waste precious time and the intimacy of a purely magical moment trying to capture it instead of just feel it, live it, which bonds the moment to us forever. A lens forever separates us from that magic. So while I can’t capture this on my cheapie phone, what I witness will be wonderful and with me, untrammeled, forever.

That was a bucket list moment. We only get to do such things for the first time, ONE time. First times are all about feels. Cameras don’t capture emotions. Those are unwieldy, unbidden, wild and they run away with us.

I was a little curious that my first impression was white smoky bands in the sky, but there it was- lightly-concealed magic, with a promise to get better tonight and tomorrow. Still, I’d done it. One more gorgeous gift to my aging self.

In fact, all the research and indications, barring cloud cover, were that it would be spectacular. There are huge solar flares, and AB activity is over the top. My timing, according to Canuk

Kristi Keller

couldn’t have been better.

My morning began early, as always, with my picture window, which revealed the coming dawn. I hiked over the frosted grass to our small dock, where a rime of ice made it slick as a skating rink. As the sun came up, everything was revealed anew:

Today I was treating myself to a flight on a float plane, perhaps the easiest form of transportation in these parts. Any excuse to get airborne, and this would allow me to see the area so far north of most of what I’ve experienced.

I’d met a woman - part of the group staying upstairs at the “prow house” part of the AirBnB-who joined me on the flight. At 68, Elise, from Ottawa, had once come to Yellowknife for two weeks and stayed two years. Apparently this was common, as after the flight she pointed out a deceptively unremarkable building.

Inside, she explained, her friend has built a beautiful home out of her townhouse.

Photo by Shen Li on Unsplash

”There’s something about being able to see the Northern Lights night after night,” she explained.

Here are some views from the air. I had signed up for a float plane flight with Ahmic Air, which is getting ready to close up for the winter. Shoulder season allowed me to easily get a flight without crowds and bring my new friend. We immersed ourselves in the pleasure of a forty-minute jaunt around the Northern Territories lake country.

Old town from the air

Lots of lakes, but all with low water levels

One bucket list item lived invariably leads to asking myself when the next one will be. I was sitting right seat, the flight student chair. While very old hours, I have some 70 hours in the air, including an ultralight pilot’s license that has whiskers on it from the 1980s in Australia.

That said, I had tears in my eyes as soon as the pontoons left the water and we were airborne at about ninety mph. My heart was on fire.

When something you do makes you cry with joy, chances are very good you need to be doing more of it (‘kay, as long as it’s legal).

Not a whole lot makes me cry, but this does. I love being in the air even more than I love horses, although not by much. Every time I lift off, so do my spirits. The bird in my chest sings loudest.

So when do I bite the bullet and sign up for lessons again?

Not sure, but something is in the offing. I have had to trade off certain extreme sports for slightly less damaging ones. Shy of a full-scale crash, flying falls into that category. It is, however, damned expensive, so there’s that.

Still, that dream won’t die, because to fly makes me cry.

With joy.

Ben, our pilot, took this shot for me to stick on my computer terminal:

This isn’t about wishful thinking, either. It’s about reminding me of what puts the bird in my chest.

What puts the bird in yours?

What is that thing you really want to do before the sun goes down on your life?

You are not too old and it is not too late for most of us. It might take work, sacrifice….but aren’t you worth it?

Isn’t your life worth it?

I’ve crawled out onto a lot of struts in my lifetime in order to let go, fly my body and float down under canopy. What I do with that and when, I don’t know. But just enjoying this gift of aurora borealis was a reminder that bucket lists aren’t meant to be left in the bucket.

Just go do them. For all of us, time moves way too fast. At 71, how many more years do I have? How many do any of us have?

What will we do with them?

I had a choice to watch the sun rise on Slave Lake in the great Canadian North, to take a flight over blue green waters, to explore this marvelous little town and be inspired OR sit at home and watch Netflix….

So I gave myself a bucket list item. Turned a dream into a goal by putting a date on it.

What’s yours?

Let’s play.

the view from up here

Thanks for taking this journey with me. Where will yours take you next? What’s the next big thing, big for you? If you were inspired by this article please consider

If this article inspired you to review your bucket list for what’s next please also consider

Above all, let’s live. Let’s play now.