Learn to surf.
Gidget and Endless Summer hooked me on surfing years ago, but all I ever knew how to do was watch. Last August we took a trip to the west coast of Ireland, and despite the frigid ocean temperatures I decided it was time to start learning. I was completely awful at it, but it's just one of those things that no matter how bad you are at it, you don't stop trying. Next stop for lessons: the warmer waters of Hawaii.

Spend a week writing in an isolated cabin in the Hebrides.
I decided recently that I will probably never write a novel. And I'm completely okay with that. But I do still think it's important to write, and a little island has always seemed like the perfect place to do this. I want hills as editors and sheep as proofreaders. The rocks and stones can be my critics. (And this is the just the kind of pap I'd probably end up churning out.)

Make a quilt.
My grandmother is a master quilter. I keep threatening to come visit her for a week so that she can teach me how to make a proper quilt at Grandma's Quilt Camp. I would love to have something like this to pass down to my children, something made by my hands that is both practical and artful. Something that would keep them warm when I'm no longer around.

Drink mint juleps at the Oak Room on a hot summer's day.
Blame The Great Gatsby for this one. A few years back when they closed the Plaza for renovations, I thought I'd completely missed my chance. But now it's open again, and I'm starting to think that this summer I might be able to cross one thing off my list.

Learn to whistle with two fingers.
I won't go until I know how.

This is an impossible question to answer. Just one? What about Pedvale in Latvia, or the little Christmas trees in Dome Square? The smooth shining cobblestones in Rovinj, Croatia? But the last place to take my breath away was in Ireland.

Dun Aengus is a 3000 year old fort on the Aran Island of Inishmore. You reach it by bike or horse & cart, once you've taken a ferry to the island from the mainland. We hiked the rest of the way to the fort, along uneven stairs carved thousands and thousands of years ago.

And then we reached the top. And it was like the fort at the end of the world.

We crept to the edge of the cliff and dangled our heads over the edge, looking down into the ocean crashing onto the rocks below, the wormhole off to the the left.

And for a moment, the world was ancient, and beautiful, and untouched. For a moment, I believed in what they say, that there are faeries in those rocks.