A bucket list is commonly defined as a compilation of achievements or dreams, that an individual hopes to achieve in their lifetime. According to Google, it originates from the phrase, “kick the bucket.” Basically, an idiom for when someone dies. So essentially, “I want to do this and this and this before I die.”

Anyways, everyone knows what a bucket list is. I’m sure most of the world population has one, or something similar, of things they hope to do or achieve. I had one as a youngster. Still have one, although I don’t know if I officially called it my bucket list. At the top of the page, I always just wrote ‘TO DO’ and listed everything below it.

My list changes from time to time. I’m sure the one I wrote as a seventeen year old is a lot different as a thirty-five year old. Some things are still the same:

• build cabin
• go to the yukon
• go to alaska
• own my own farm
• experience the backcountry on horses
• learn to shoe & pack horses

I can’t recall what was all on my ‘bucket list’ as a teenager beyond those six points. Hike the Chilkoot Trail was on it. Maybe not as a seventeen year old, but definitely was added onto it within two to three years. I’m sure if I tore through all of my old notebooks that I have never tossed out, I think I could possibly find something.

The consistency is there.

Travel. Ranch. Experience life.

I think it was like, 2014 when I truly got bit by the desire to be on the road, well before #vanlife became a thing. At that time, I worked a minimum wage job at a local carwash and on days when it was exceptionally slow, I’d sit and watch Youtube videos of people who travelled to Alaska in an old VW van. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted an old orange VW van.

Guess that’s on the bucket list, too.

The thought of being on the road, no true destination besides life, appealed to me. I loved the idea of having all the time in the world to just be and to experience absolutely everything the open road had to offer. I’ve never been able to pinpoint where this deep desire came from and it’s one that escapes me when it comes to fulfilling.

I have never felt so free, as I have when I’m behind the wheel of a vehicle, with mountains before me and mountains in the rearview.

While I was being bit by the vanlife bug, I also happened to get bit by the tiny house movement as well. The two go hand in hand. Live simply, downsize, very small living space. Those tiny houses on trailers that people could pull behind a vehicle were fascinating to me. I dove headfirst into research and even purchased the plans to a Tumbleweed; an expense I was excited for and ultimately regretted down the road.

For your information, it never did get built.

My parents were against that type of home automatically. I still lived at home, with them. I moved out when I was eighteen — well almost nineteen I guess — to work and live in Banff. Then again the following year to spend several months living with my aunt & uncle. When that ended on quite the sour note, I ran home to the farm. It was safe at the farm.

I joked that the world traumatized me, as I haven’t gone far from the farm since.

Anyways, so instead of a tiny house on wheels that my parents thought was kind of silly, I opted for one on skids. In 2014, I built the base. Remember, this was on a minimum wage job, and lumber is expensive. That was also around the time when I decided I wanted to drive up to the Yukon.

So the cabin build was put off and not revisited for another year. So goes life.

Time rolled on and the days passed and I sat and stared at the little base of what was supposed to be my cabin, deteremined to finish what I started. It wasn’t always that I seen something through to the end. My job at the local carwash brought in all sorts of characters and I chatted the ears of to a few of my favourites about my tiny cabin life dream and the Yukon dream.

My favourite garbage truck driver at the time looked at me like I was a bit crazy and said, “you know theres this old spinster that lives up in the Deerhill area. You two just might get along. No man wants to willingly live that way.”

I laughed, standing there in the washbay next to that giant brown truck he drove. “I’m definitely not trying to impress any man!”

He just smiled, “Okay then.”

The manager of the carwash, his buddy would tease me, “That donkey of yours will haul your Amish wagon up the Yukon.” To this day, he still brings up the donkey (who passed away in 2017 due to an accident) and my tiny house on wheels dream. But he also loves to replay a video I sent him of me singing a Chilliwack song Fly By Night as I drove a garbage truck down the highway, so it’s no surprise he still remembers the donkey with the “Amish wagon.”

I do believe it was the same big brown garbage truck from a few paragraphs before. Amazing how much life changes.

Oh ya, did I mention become a garbage truck driver was also added the bucket list? But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

The months passed and 2014 slipped into 2015 and that spring, work continued on my cabin. My design was fairly simple. 16′ x 16′ with a loft and a front deck. The carwash job at the time was paying me, I do believe fourteen dollars an hour. I wrote down every single expense I made, although not in great detail which is a regret.

We built on it as I could afford and by end of September it was moved out to where I wanted it on my dad’s farm and he and my now ex-brother in law put in the windows. Then it snowed in November and we put the siding on and called it good for the winter.

Dreams do come true.

I’ve also been to the Yukon three times and Alaska twice. But there’s so much more to explore and to see and that bucket list, it just keeps on growing.