scratching off that bucket list

Live my own version of "A River Runs Through It."

Run for public office.

Take a picture with Old Faithful in the background.

Dance with someone under a starry sky... with or without music playing, no one else around.

See the Marfa Lights.

Fall madlessly, hopelessly in love.

Go to Sante Fe with my mom.

Raise quirky, crazy children.

Run a half marathon in under 2 hours.

Write a book.

Be a YoungLife leader.

Tend a beautiful garden.

See a tornado.

Watch the sunrise in Newfoundland.

Spend a weekend with good friends in Martha's Vineyard - talking in accents the entire time.

I'm sure everyone has a bucket list - things they want to do before they die. Mine isn't really put together all in one place - every journal I've ever kept has a few things in it I've jotted down as must-dos. I've had conversations with good friends or my parents about places to see and things to do before we die. Dreaming is a fun past time, and it's healthy to live life on a mission in some ways - after all, tomorrow is not guaranteed.

This summer I will teach the month of June and have to be back sometime at school in the first days of August. That leaves July to vacation, regroup, make things happen. Which brought me to the bucket list.

Reality is that I'm probably too old and too much of a has-been to be at Camp Longhorn. I thought about a mission trip, but this entire year has felt like a domestic mission trip in many ways. So I'm selfishly packing my mom's car, shoving my mom in the passenger seat, and heading to Montana. (My dad is going via plane, following one of the many routes he's currently charting in multicolored dry erase markers on a giant map. Lord help us, his aviation skills will keep him in one piece.)

We'll meet to find bears and hiking trails in Yellowstone together, celebrate my favorite holiday in Missoula - Happy Birthday, America! Then, my mom will fly back to Texas and I will stay for 5 or 6 days until, hopefully, Dr. Katherine will join me for a half marathon, maybe my brother and my friend Amy, too. Then Renza will meet me to soak up some Montana and then drive with me through Wyoming, visit a friend in Denver, and I'll drop her at her parent's in Oklahoma on my way back to Houston. I'm sure there will be plenty of trouble for us to get in along the way. Frere Jacques is not going to know what hit him. (Frere Jacques is the name of my SLR camera that forever changed my life. I recommend everyone run out to Costco today and buy the NikonD60. Figure out how to pay for it later.)

I'll update the blog with more details later. My mom and I will first stop in Marfa, Texas - a place I've been dying to go since I first read about the spooky lights seven or eight years ago.

You can read about them here. Sorry about the bright yellow text.

tp://www.qsl.net/w5www/marfa.html

Sometimes at work, when I find myself restraining a four year old who his sticking his finger down his throat in an attempt to make himself sick while I'm in a padded room and my sixteen other students are with my teaching assistant, I wonder why I have been dealt this card. But, then I think about the fact that I will drive to Montana this year. A dream I've had forever! The adventures my mom and I will have along the way-my stomach already hurts from laughing. The thought of my dad getting arrested for flying too low in Sandstone National Park in Utah on his way to meet us. Renza, Katherine, the sound of the river dancing over rocks as I sit alone on its banks... I am more excited for July than I can say.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.
- A River Runs Through It