Do the Bucket List NOW

Aurora
Either the Borealis or the Australis will do. This may be out of reach -- reaching the polar regions is costly, and beyond the usual Vagabond budget. Add in the cost of cold weather gear (aurorae are nighttime phenomena, and in the polar zones, nighttime equals winter), and this could become a major outlay.

Zodiacal Light
As aurorae appear only in polar zones, zodiacal light is precisely the opposite -- it belongs uniquely to the tropics. Though I have been to the tropics a number of times -- and am likely to be again -- I have yet to see the zodiacal light.

Nocturnal Rainbow
I just missed this one. In Costa Rica, a couple of the other students in my class saw the nocturnal rainbow ("moonbow," they called it), but I was indoors at the time, and missed it. They wrote home about this exceedingly rare phenomenon, but they were misunderstood; the letter of reply claimed it was not rare, and went on to talk about halo around the moon. But the nocturnal rainbow is not halo around the moon, anymore than the daytime rainbow is halo around the sun. When you look at a rainbow in the daytime, the sun is behind you; in the same way, when you see a true nocturnal rainbow, the moon will be behind you. The nocturnal rainbow is white, as it is made of refracted moonlight. One day I shall see it.

The Southern Cross
Seen off the Australian Coast, year 2004 Few constellations are so famous, or so brilliant, as the Southern Cross; fewer still are depicted on flags. We see the Southern Cross on the flags of Australia, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, and, together with other constellations, Brazil. Crosby, Stills, and Nash wrote a song about it, beautifully covered by Jimmy Buffett, Live in Anguilla. But growing up in the Northern Hemisphere, I never got to see this star formation that so inspired so many. What a treat it was, that pitch-black night at sea! The Southern Cross blazed in the sky, and next to it (as on the Australian flag), Beta Centauri; next to that, Alpha Centauri, famous in itself as the nearest star to our solar system.

Orion
Seen many times, since childhood The Hunter is the most recognisable constellation of the winter sky in the Northern Hemisphere. As such, he and I have developed a relationship of sorts. His belt actually runs along the equator; his head points north, his feet, south. Thus the sign of the Hunter is a valuable friend to the human hunter or other outdoors person -- a guide in the wilderness, pointing the way.

St. Elmo's Fire
In the days of sail, a glowing light would sometimes appear at the top of a ship's mast when the air was highly charged with electricity. Today's ships have steel masts crowned with all manner of antennae and radar, and I do not know whether St. Elmo's Fire can appear on such.

Luminescent Plankton
Seen in Georgia, U.S.A., year 2000 Depending on one's concept of "plankton," I may actually have seen this much earlier. On a childhood trip to the beach, we once captured a ctenophore (like a jellyfish, but without stinging tentacles), and kept it overnight in a small aquarium. After the lights were off, we began seeing flashes of blue-white light, almost like the flashbulb of a camera, and traced them to the ctenophore. It kept this up for several hours, until we fell asleep. Next morning, it and everything else in the aquaruim was dead -- we did not know how to keep a proper saltwater aquarium then. Ctenophores, like jellyfish, are technically "jelly plankton;" but most people think of plankton as very tiny or even microscopic life forms, and it is these that I saw in Georgia -- in the salt creeks convoluting the Georgia coast. Crouching down on the floating dock, one could run one's hand through the water and stir up tiny flashes of light, like sparks.

Uninhabited Oceanic Island
Not all of my wish list is nocturnal phenomena involving light. Somewhere out there lies a tiny island with no people on it, no structures nor remnants of structures from long ago, no airstrip nor boat moorage, and only the wide blue ocean all around. Should I land on it, or merely sail round it? That part I have not yet decided; to land on it would be more intimate, yet at the same time, would sully its glorious isolation. One thing I do know: when I find it, I will not tell you where it is.

Unexplored Wilderness
Most wilderness has long since been explored. If there exists a trail through it, or a ground-truthed map of it, it is too late. If there exist human settlements in it, it has or will soon cease to be a wilderness. GPS technology has all but obliterated pure wilderness, since coordinates to every point on the planet's surface can now be found. If a truly unexplored -- unsurveyed, unmapped, unpeopled -- wilderness area still exists somewhere, the only right way to go in (if one insists upon going in at all) is in a state of natural purity. That is to say, leave behind all things of civilization -- not only GPS transceivers, satellite phones and other high-tech gadgets, but also simple tools, civilized foods and containers, and even clothing. And like the aforementioned island, I will never tell you where it is.

Ancient Ruins
Okay, so this may seem rather ordinary to some readers; after all, Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, the major Mayan sites, and for that matter Stonehenge and the ruins of Egypt, Greece, and Italy are all popular travel destinations. But I've yet to see any of them. Those of you who have, are ahead of me on that point.

Unassimilated Indiginous People
Everywhere the West goes, it creates cookie-cutter cultures. In a world once teeming with diverse societies, we now see more and more duplications of the standard global Third-World pattern. Languages, customs, and costumes are being transformed from living entities, into dusty museum pieces. If they wear their traditional costume in the hope of being photographed in exchange for money, it is too late. If they perform their traditional songs and dances for the benefit of paying audiences, it is too late. They are already as good as assimilated. The ones I seek are the ones whose costumes, songs, dances, and ceremonies are still for their own benefit, apart from the money economy. They need not be uncontacted if the acculturation process has not yet taken hold; and if they are uncontacted, I need not actually make contact, but need only see them. Yep, you guessed it -- I will not tell you where they are.

Tepuis
Tepuis are the big table-mountains in eastern Venezuela. (Angel Falls cascades down a tepui.) There is the flatland rainforest at the bases, sheer walls rising up, and at the top, mist-shrouded bogs. A number of tepuis remain unscaled, but are likely to have unique species, as do those already explored. There are certain birds, for example, found only on this or that particular tepui. This is one of the least-accessible parts of the world.

Wild Ratites
Ratites are the big, flightless birds: rheas (Patagonia), ostriches (Africa), elephant birds (Madagascar), emus (Australia), cassowaries (New Guinea), and moas (New Zealand). I have specified wild, because it is fairly easy to see ratites both in zoos and on farms. Ostriches and emus are both farmed nowadays. Alas, it is too late for moas and elephant birds -- these are extinct -- but the others remain.

Wild Birds-of-Paradise
I have already seen birds-of-paradise in zoos. The wild ones hide in the jungle recesses of New Guinea and its neighbour islands, and there are many more species than one would ever see in a zoo, including one whose very existence is uncertain -- merely vague reports from deep in the mountains of Irian Jaya.

Wild Mousebirds
Seen in Windhoek, Namibia, year 2012 So many of Africa's birds are similar to those of Asia, but with fewer species. But here is an entire order of birds -- Coliiformes -- found only in sub-Saharan Africa. How is it possible, then, that they are urban birds? Cities have been a feature of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia for many centuries, but they are new to Africa; Rome, Damascus, and Beijing were already ancient while the present site of Windhoek was still wild bushveld. Yet urban birds they are, flying tree to tree in parks and landscaped parking lots, long-tailed, gray, mouse-like.

Artist Modelling
Done at Greenville, North Carolina, USA, year 2010 From childhood I was an artistically-inclined bookworm, which, inevitably, meant that I was exposed to images of "The Nude in Art." Whether Classical Greek heroes or Rennaissance courtesans, some few of all the people who ever lived have been immortalized in their naked beauty. Long after the living person has returned to the dust, his or her beauty can still be enjoyed in marble or on canvas. Well, I suppose the drawings produced by university students in their figure drawing class are not likely to immortalize me; but even so, it felt good to see my own body as seen by others -- no two the same, none matching the magazine-cover ideal of beauty, but each one beautiful in its own way. Clothes always feel like costumes: we dress according to the role we are playing at the moment. When we are naked, that is when we are really ourselves. At least that is how it has always felt to me.

The list could have gone on and on, had I thought about it more; but there is only just so much one person can do in a lifetime, what with the business of day-to-day life pressing in always. These few items shall suffice -- augmented by the other things I have seen, some expected, some not.