The WordPress/JetPack writing prompt for today is:
What’s a country that’s at the top of your bucket list?
I have travelled a lot. I’ve seen many places and been to many events. I’ve swum with dolphins in New Zealand. I’ve set foot in North Korea. I’ve walked with rhinos in Namibia, and walked alone down Las Ramblas on a winter night.
Every time I try to count the number of countries I’ve been to, I remember another one. I think it’s thirty-seven countries on four continents (The only continents I haven’t been to are South America and Antarctica). But there’s also many places that i’ve been to that although very foreign are territories of other countries (Saipan is an American territory, for example).
And yet, I do still have a bucket list. The places that I haven’t been to that call out to me are all less attached to the countries they reside in than to an historical country that doesn’t exist any more.
Angkor Wat is in Cambodia but predates that country by centuries. Ditto for the great pyramids of Egypt, and Machu Picchu in Peru. These are all places that would be on my bucket list. Each represents a culture long lost to us. I’d love to stand in their shadows and thank them for the steps they took in progressing humans towards whatever future awaits us.
But, and there is a big but, when I think about places that I urgently want to go to, none of these are top of mind. My bucket list now isn’t places I long to see, it’s places in Canada that I long to introduce my wife to. We live in her home country so she’s gotten to show me many of the places that are important to her.
I want to do the same.
I want her to see Beausoleil Island in Georgian Bay, a place where I spent many summer nights. I want her to experience the drive from Calgary to Banff with Cascade Mountain rising as a back drop. I want to see her face when she walks into the Banff Springs Hotel. I want her to dip a toe in Lake Louise. I want her to stand on that pedestrian bridge in Elora when the first snow of autumn falls at night, the gentle falling snow contrasted by the speed of the Grand River beneath.
I want her to feel the magic I’ve felt in these places. That’s my bucket list.