50 Things I’ve Never Done Before

I don’t quite know how it happened but I’m rapidly approaching that milestone in life……..turning 50! Most days I still feel as if my inner child is never going to grow up but the grey hairs on my head and wrinkles around my eyes when I smile can’t hide the fact that she’s got a few years under her Barbie belt.

To celebrate a half-century of living (gee, sounds real appealing when you word it that way, doesn’t it?), I decided that between now and September 30th, 2013, my actual birthday, I will do “50 Things I’ve Never Done Before“.

I’ve started compiling my list of 50 Things, of which I’ve given myself no particular limitations or guidelines beyond that they have to be fun (and legal, mostly…..), things I’ve never done before and things that I’d really love to do. Which is why bungee-jumping won’t make it onto my list. And neither will public acts of karaoke. Or eating escargot in France…..or any other country for that matter.

I want to do 50 Things that I’d LOVE to do. And then maybe I’ll love the idea of being a half-century old a whole lot more too. At the very least, I’ll have 5o more reasons to love my life. And that’s a groovy thing.

One of my 50 Things is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while now, since first moving to Nanaimo. And that has been to climb Nanaimo’s legendary mountain and highest vantage point, Mount Benson.

When I awoke to a few morsels of sunshine and blue sky this morning (which can be a rare event on the west coast from October – April) I decided to carpe diem and climb Mount Benson, thus kicking off my 50 Things journey.

I’m happy to report that I safely summited and descended the mountain. And, if this is what’s it’s going to be like, I might just love this turning 50 thing after all.

If you look closely, you can see that Nanaimo is at the end of the rainbow

Just in case you can't see the rainbow, let me point it out to you.

Some (likely not 50 year old) folks used to take their bikes down these trails. Yikes.

Daisy 'Mo on the summit. She could care less about the view. She just wanted to see some squirrels.