40 is upon me. I haven't been looking forward to this milestone; I think when the big numbers approach, we tend to take inventory of our lives, and too often people find them lacking. It's easy to think about all the things we haven't done yet, all the places we haven't been, or the people we haven't become. I was about to wallow in my own melancholy, but when I got to school today one of my students asked, "Hey Ms. Gudahl, what have you done in your first 40 years?"
Sometimes I'm not the teacher; I still have a few things to learn, and I love it when a student does the honors.
I hadn't been looking at 40 that way. And now that I'm thinking about it, my first 40 years have been pretty amazing. I waited a long time to settle into a family life and routine, and spent much of my youth having one adventure after another. I decided that rather than create a bucket list of all the things I haven't done yet, I would celebrate my fortieth year by making my "Been There, Done That" list. I think instead of feeling anxious about all the living left to do, I'll rest easy in the contentment of all the things I've already done, good/bad and otherwise.
Let's see...
* I have lived in 10 different cities, in 4 different states and 2 different countries.
* I've pitched a tent in a sandbar on the side of a river and watched the sun come up over the Continental Divide.
* I've loved and lost a Jessie dog, and will probably never get over it.
* I broke a wrist and got a concussion snowboarding down a mountain bowl at 12,000 ft.
* I climbed to the top of Blarney Castle in Ireland and bent over backwards (literally) to kiss the Blarney Stone.
* I hiked to the top of Mount Princeton and notched my first fourteener.
* I ate lunch in an abandoned mine shaft on the top of a mountain.
* I took a train to Seattle, and stayed a week with people I met on the internet. (Great people, actually, but holy cow that was a big risk. How invincible we feel in our twenties...)
* I camped in a snowbank in -10 degree weather on the banks of a lake in Kansas with a Brittany spaniel tucked into my sleeping bag to keep me warm.
* I competed on a trap team in Colorado; I was the youngest member of the team by almost 40 years.
* I spent four hours eating a meal at a restaurant in Florence, Italy with complete strangers.
* I ran a half-marathon - the Bolder Boulder - without walking, and finished under my goal time.
* I was robbed in Salzburg, Austria and had to panhandle and work for money to make my way home.
* I can perform an amazing card trick, thanks to my friend Doug Rachac who spent about a zillion hours trying to teach it to me.
* I became a Christian for real in March 2003.
* I watched a glass blower in Venice make a glass penguin for me.
* I wrapped an inflatable kayak on Raft Ripper in the bottom of the Brown's Canyon Run and needed a private boat and about 10 people to help me get it out.
* I've had the privilege of mentoring more kids than I can count in my classroom each year for the last 15 years. Some of them have become lifelong friends.
* I learned how to live an (almost) sustainable life; how to raise animals, grow my own food, and even prepare it in a way that is better than average.
* I've made it to 40 without a single traffic ticket, although I have experienced 2 car accidents.
* I gave birth to 3 babies in 3 states in 4 years.
* When we were still young and reckless, Aaron and I used to ride his motorcycle all over the countryside, at questionable speeds. (Sorry, Mom!)
* I've eaten a picnic lunch in the bed of a pickup truck in the back of a cornfield.
* I've been a lifeguard, a dispatcher, a waitress, a secretary, a coach and a teacher.
* I won $75 once on a scratch off ticket.
* I've been to 19 country music concerts, 4 pop concerts, 1 Lilith Fair and 1 Widespread Panic concert. (That last one was enough to last me another 40 years, I think - holy cow. WP at Red Rocks. Need I say more?)
* I've eaten a hot dog at Target Field.
* I touched the Vietnam Memorial.
* I have had my heart broken. I have broken someone's heart.
* I can bait a hook, light a campfire, mow a lawn and run a garden tiller.
* I can make an owie feel better with kisses and lovies.
* Three years in a row, I cut down my own Christmas tree, dragged it down the mountain, chopped off the bottom and put it up in my living room. (Okay, Aaron helped a little bit, but it was still pretty cool!)
* I talked to Justin Timberlake's grandmother on the phone.
* I watched a veterinarian perform an autopsy on a cow, effectively ending my dreams of becoming a veterinarian.
* I've been a frequent visitor of amusement parks: I like rollercoasters in particular.
* I've rocked a karaoke mic a few times. (Usually with a little liquid courage, I have to admit.)
* I've gotten a four-wheeler stuck in a mud hole on a country road so badly that by the time I got home there wasn't a square inch of me anywhere that wasn't splattered in mud.
* I've buried people I love.
* I spent Y2K in a mountain cabin drinking Dom Perignon out of coffee cups and waiting for the end of the civilized world.
* I have a few friends who would do almost anything for me.
* I have known love, of the deepest kind: steady, reliable and true.
I think if I wanted to keep going, I could probably keep going. Maybe I could be here all night, even. And that's what I'm taking with me, when I usher in this new decade of my life. I've lived, quite a lot. And I have a lot of living left to do...I can't wait to see what the next forty look like.
