The Bucket List / Final Chapter

We awake in the cold grey light of another mountain morning. I wake first and peek through the bedroom curtain, almost rolling off the tiny bed; it’s snowing. The ground has a thin dusty coat of snow. Everything is still and quiet. I silently slip out of bed, careful not to step on my friend still sleeping on the floor. The little cabin is nice and warm, a black cast iron wood burning stove keeps the place cozy. I use the bathroom and then shower, I’ll be heading home later that afternoon.

When I walk back into the bedroom my friend is awake on the floor. “It’s snowing,” I say.

“Yes, I just got a text from my friend telling us we should check the flight to make sure you can get out this afternoon… apparently a dusting of snow will close the airports here,” she says.

I laugh at the thought, especially after flying in and out of Buffalo, NY just a few weeks ago.

When she gets up to use the bathroom I grab my phone and log into the airline’s app: ON TIME.

We make the bed, fold up the blankets. She stokes the old cast iron stove, not sure if she’s doing it correctly, I shrug not quite sure either. We turn off the lights, make sure the little space heater in the bathroom is off and unplugged. We pull our clean laundry out of the dryer, me separating our clothes into two piles, folding them up, slipping my clean clothes back into my bag and then we’re on her friend’s back porch, me doing my best to balance as I remove one of my house slippers and swap it out with one of my heavy boots, laden in thick red mud. Once on I stand on my opposite leg and balance as I slip on my other boot, the laces dangle around my ankles. She locks the back door and we crunch through the snow, our boots leaving a trail of red mud on the white frozen drive.

Our breath is visible in the car. We’re shivering, our bags in the back seat she starts the vehicle. The heater kicks on but we get only cold air. We decide she needs an ice scraper for her windshield. Snow is still falling down in lacy wisps, the morning turns from a cool blue to the golden yellows of first light. We sit in silence for a few minutes as the heater begins to warm the windshield enough to melt the thin layer of snow and ice. I’ll be flying home in a few hours… no more snow, no more ice, leaving one of my closest friends to fend for herself in this primitive living situation…

We make our way up the mountain, the sun has begun peeking through the hollers, and valleys, over the snaking river. “I can’t believe I’m leaving today,” I say.

“I know,” she says, disappointed.

We’re back at the cabin wondering what we’ll do with the last few hours I’m here. We decide to visit a miniature cow farm but when we call, we find out they’re closed and we’ll have to make an appointment to visit next time I come up. We sit in her living room at the old farm table, passing the bong back and forth, smoke swirling up to the popcorn ceiling… “You know once you get your boat up here… this is all going to be great… you’ll have plumbing and a shower and a clean place to live… and SINKS!!! You can wash your hands whenever you want! Then you’ll get your cabin all finished… and this is all going to be so good!”

She smiles, “Yup… few more weeks and the boat will be here. It’s fine… I just have to rough it a few more weeks and I can do that… then I’ll be good. I’m having you come back up here once the boat comes, FYI.”

I’m excited to help get the boat painted, decorated and ready for living/AirBnb-ing on her mountaintop property. She’s told me that everyone in the small town now knows about her the ‘newbie’ in town and the boat saga… it’s hard to miss a 39’ 1968 houseboat at the local Ingles parking lot when your town has a population less than 1200. “And what do the mountain folk think of you and your boat?” I ask, intrigued.

“They think I’m an idiot. They think that I’ll never get the boat up here and that for the amount of money I’ve spent to buy the boat and move it, that I could have already had a tiny home built on the property,” she sighs…

“You mean the same boring ass shit that everyone else has up here?” I begin, angry at these imagination-less town-folks for shitting on my friend.

“Yup.” She sighs.

“Well that’s bullshit because they can’t see the bigger picture and the bigger picture is that there are a shit ton of short term rentals in this area… but you know what there are none of in all the AirBnb listings out there??? A fucking houseboat in the mountains… AND THAT is going to get you a ton of renters… and I’d even venture to say that a lot of the people you rent to won’t even give a shit about visiting this town, they’re just going to want to say that they stayed in the only drydocked boat in the entire AirBnb rental catalog. Those freaking town folk are going to be singing a very different tune once they start getting a conveyer belt of renters coming down to visit from the mountain boat…” and then for good measure, “fuck these fuckers that can’t think outside the box… and have to be mean about it to boot… you’re going to show them…”

She smiles and shrugs, me getting fired up over the thought of these people being judgmental meanies to my friend… I’m ready to rage… she’s calm cool and collected.

“Well fuck em’. Fuck em, fuck em, fuck em… You will get your mountain boat and we will celebrate and then we’ll watch all their judgy-mcjudgerson faces parade past your boat, ooohing and ahhhing and you can know and have the satisfaction of knowing that everyone said that this would be, ‘impossible’ yet you still did it,” I say with resolution. She just laughs and says, “Whatever,” I want to line up everyone in the town and give them a talking to for not being more encouraging…

“People are always threatened by the unconventional,” I say taking a long drag from the bong. “My therapist and I were talking about this the other day.”

“Well my entire life is unconventional,” she says.

I hand the bong back to her. “Yup and same.”

“You’ve always been a cheerleader. You’ve always heard my crazy ideas, hell you’ve added to the crazy ideas, and you’ve never told me they were un-doable or dumb… you’ve always had my back in all this. Thank you,” she says as she inhales deeply before passing the bong back to me.

“My friend, no need to thank me ever, you do the same for me. You don’t even tell me that having a miniature house cow as a pet one day is a bad idea… and for that… I mean… that’s right up there with a dry-docked mountain boat on the ‘crazy train’ of life so… we’re good… we’re also both unconventional nut-jobs.”

At this point the snow has stopped falling, the sun is high in the sky and I begin packing my bag for my return trip home. I check her room twice before letting her know I have everything I need. I stare at the bucket in the closet… “I’m going to pee one last time before we head out to the airport… long ride…” She nods and walks out of the room, I slide my yoga pants down before using the bucket one last time.

“Alright, I just checked the airline app and my flight is still on time… let’s get the fuck out of here.” I pet her cat, tell her to be a ‘goodest-bestest cat’ and that I’ll see her soon and then we’re hitting the bong one last time, changing from our house shoes to our muddy boots, me balancing precariously trying to not step on any of the dry dirt in the shoe swap area. We crunch through the still frozen mud, back to her car, me opening the back seat to toss my bag in there. We’re sad it’s time for me to leave.

The car warms quickly this time. I wave goodbye to her house, “I’ll see you next time, cabin! And hopefully the boat will be here too!!! How fun will that be to see your boat up here!!! Oh my god, I can’t fucking wait… everything is looking so good… you’ve gotten so much done up here, you should be really proud of everything you’ve accomplished. You’ve been through a lot and look at you, about to be a fucking captain of your own little piece of the mountain!”

“Thank you,” she laughs.

“Look at me! Look at me! I am the captain now!” I try in my best ‘Captain Philips’ pirate impersonation voice.

It’s an hour drive to the Asheville airport from her cabin. We’re quiet. We don’t talk that much at this point. When we get to the airport she’s pulling in before I ask her if she minds first stopping at the Culver’s we just passed… I remember my husband telling me there was nowhere to get food at the little airport and I’m pretty hungry at this point. I grab a veggie burger and she gets cheese curds to eat on the way home.

When we get to the departure drop off I hop out of the car and grab my bag in the backseat. “Call me if you need anything, you got this, and I will see you soon! Miss you!!!!”

“Thank you for everything!” She says. We wave and she drives off, leaving me on the cold sidewalk with my muddy boots and overnight bag…

*******************************

It’s been said that one should have a list… a list of all the things one would like to experience before kicking that proverbial bucket. I know Iceland is high on my list, Yellowstone National Park, Alaska… they’re up there too. But now I’m rethinking my bucket, or at least thinking of it differently. It’d be nice to visit far off places, collecting memories like I used to collect blueberries in a basket as a child, yet what we did here on this mountain… there’s something to be said about that too.

What if you restarted your life, just picked up and moved… not just visited, but just upped your entire life, knowing no one, knowing nothing of the place, the people, what to expect, and just going for it? Knowing that the proverbial boat you’re currently in is going nowhere… and that you could very well stay but what if you took a chance… what if you were willing to just say ‘fuck it’ and do something so different, so off the cuff, that strangers thought you were nuts, that family shook their heads and laughed, that no one save for a few friends thought you could do it? What if you were willing to tear your life down to the very basics… a shell of a home, a bucket in an old closet… and rebuild something so much better in its place?

A few days ago we walked into Dollar Tree with our list… me squatting in the aisle, pretending to use the bucket in the unnatural glow of the florescent lights, her laughing as I nearly toppled over before remarking that, “These are definitely sturdy enough.” The entire way back to the car we had laughed, me swinging the new buckets around, her carrying the box of cat litter…

Sometimes a bucket list is a collection of trips to far off places… but sometimes in the case of us: two unconventional friends high on a mountain top in a shell of a cabin, prepping for a dry-docked houseboat… it’s about tearing everything down to the bare essentials, and building the life you’ve always wanted for yourself… not the life others imagined for you, but the life you chose…

And while I’m not shelving my trip to Iceland anytime soon… I will say that there’s something to be said about a restart, a back to basics, a brand new life… a cabin in the woods, a boat on a mountaintop… a bucket in the closet, and the knowledge that you’re living life on your own terms… That you’re willing to tear down your predictable life of comfort for a shot, albeit a risky shot, but a shot nonetheless at ‘so much better’… Taking an unconventional risk… now that’s some kinda shit to aspire to.

A good bucket list should include trips and experiences and lots of fun, but an even better bucket list should include (at least once in your lifetime): tearing anything that no longer suits you and your life down to the studs and rebuilding from scratch… I’d also recommend a plastic liner, cat litter, and an even better sense of humor.

Let me know how that works out for you, and know that I’m cheering you on…

Happy to report that the boat has since been, despite nearly EVERYONE saying this was an impossible endeavor, brought home to its final resting place on a North Carolina mountaintop. :) Dream big friends!