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When I First Started Travelling
Managing the Bucket List: Vol I follows your post-retirement “Travel Big Year” across glaciers, cathedrals, rainforests, pilgrimage routes, and historic cities as you discover that bucket-list travel is about letting the world revise how we understand it. Why was this an important book for you to write?
When I first started traveling, I didn’t envision a book but by the third trip, Italy, I realized that the trips are very informative and I wanted to capture the information and experience, so I started a journal. I left space to write about the previous two trips from memory. Within one or two of the next trips, I decided that an overview of the trip and my perspective may be something that book readers would be interested in. So, I really started thinking about how to structure the book to be most readable and effective. Although at first, it was about a book for the first year, I quickly realized that I would pursue multiple travel years and therefore multiple books. Specifically, why is it important for me to write? Because I feel that my background adds a certain comprehensive lens to my knowledge gained and experience encountered that can help others to understand the world better, people and environment.
Of all the places you visited in this volume, which destination changed your perspective the most, and why?
That is a tough question because I learned many new things with every trip and location. But if I have to pick one, I think that the trips to Patagonia and Alaska to see the glaciers really conveyed the effects of climate change. Seeing firsthand how far Mendenhall Galcier had receded in Alaska. Most of the glaciers in Patagonia had also significantly receded except for Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina which is growing. Everyone hears about the impact of climate change on the environment. However, when one sees the impacts in nature’s setting, there is an emotional connection that is difficult to encounter when reading about or viewing on television. Documentaries do a great job of providing the information, but the emotional connection requires seeing first-hand.
How has visiting UNESCO sites, religious landmarks, and natural wonders affected the way you think about preservation and global responsibility?
I have become much more appreciative of the efforts that have been made to preserve history whether man-made or nature-made through UNESCO recognition, cultural or religious landmarks, and natural wonders. In some cases, these sites are hidden pieces to understanding a historical evolution that can shed light on potential future challenges. In other words, understanding our past can help us to be better prepared for our future. Once these treasures are gone, they are gone forever. Bamiyan comes to mind and the Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban during their first reign in Afghanistan. Having spent time in Iraq too, war-torn countries have lost many of these historic sites over centuries, but hopefully there are means to protect what is left. Iraq has so much history with the iconic city of Babylon in its borders. It would be a travesty for any ruins left to be destroyed by twenty-first century war.
What advice would you give to retirees or lifelong learners who want to create a meaningful bucket list but feel overwhelmed by the planning?
First, put a little effort into thinking about where one would like to go and what one would like to do. For some people that might be easy because they have acquired insight for some period of time on preparing a bucket list. They may have been building that list since their early twenties of the places and activities they want to do when they finally have the time. For others, do a little research. Quite a bit of my list has been from friends that have described places and activities that they have done. One friend’s parents traveled the continental United States visiting national parks largely staying in a tent after they retired. Through their experience, she built her own list, accomplishing some with her children while they were growing up. I feel like I missed the boat not doing that more with my children. Now, I am trying to catch up with family trips to these places for my granddaughter to experience the value of nature at a very early age. I have a family trip planned to the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee for a few days and then Asheville, North Carolina to visit Biltmore Estates. I’ve been to both places with a friend, but the family engagement makes the trip a special memory. My two sons are doing falconry at Biltmore, an activity one son has dreamed about since he was a child.
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Using a country assessment index, I evaluate the stability of the nations that I have visited. Reading this book, one gains a better understanding of the world. This better understanding promotes a philosophy of respecting cultural differences while recognizing that we share many of the same core human elements: rights, desires, and challenges. One should embrace our similarities while celebrating our differences. The year encompassed travel to Portugal; Argentina and Chile’s Patagonia; Italy; Seattle, Washington, United States; Switzerland; France; Australia; Alaska, United States; Spain; Hungary; Slovenia; Austria; Germany; Czech Republic; and Costa Rica. This grouping of countries is just the first of a multi-year endeavor; the quest for learning and understanding is an iterative approach. This book is to inspire readers to travel to gain better understanding of the world, its land and people, through bucket list natural wonders and man-made accomplishments. For those challenged to travel for a number of reasons, my journey provides a literary approach to experience the world.
The intent of this book is a literary journey traveling the globe to gain a better understanding of international relations and geopolitics and share my knowledge to entice others to be intellectual travelers too.
Managing the Bucket List: The Journey Begins Volume I
Carol McIlwain’s Managing the Bucket List: The Journey Begins, Volume I is part travel memoir, part bucket-list reference guide, and part wide-ranging meditation on how seeing the world can deepen a person’s understanding of history, culture, nature, and global politics. McIlwain frames her post-retirement “Travel Big Year” as both an adventure and an intellectual project, moving from explanations of bucket lists, UNESCO sites, wonders of the world, and religious landmarks into a packed year of trips through Portugal, Patagonia, Italy, Seattle, Switzerland, northern France, Australia, Alaska and western Canada, Spain and France, the Danube, Costa Rica, and southern Florida. What emerges is not a sleek little travelogue, but a big, earnest, densely packed record of a mind trying to make sense of the world by walking through it.
What I appreciated most about the book is its sincerity. McIlwain writes like someone who doesn’t just want to collect places, but to be changed by them. Her descriptions often have the feeling of a journal opened after a long day, still warm from motion. I felt that most strongly in Patagonia, when she describes eating a bag lunch across from Perito Moreno Glacier, listening for the deep crack of calving ice and trying, again and again, to catch the moment on camera. That’s the kind of travel writing I like, not merely “I went here and saw this,” but the small human comedy of awe, impatience, and wonder all tangled together. I also liked the way she treats travel as a form of education. A visit to the Vatican turns into a reflection on Michelangelo, power, faith, and artistic endurance; the Camino de Santiago becomes not just a route, but a symbol of fellowship and persistence; Costa Rica’s rainforests and renewable-energy commitments open into broader questions about stewardship. At its best, the book makes curiosity feel like a moral habit.
McIlwain’s style is informational, and there are moments when a castle, cathedral, glacier, or city arrives wrapped in a lot of background. I found that accumulation of detail endearing because it reflects the book’s central temperament. This is a planner’s travel memoir, written by someone who thinks in systems, lists, contexts, histories, and connections. The ideas are especially interesting when McIlwain lets travel complicate her thinking, as when she connects difficult histories, colonial legacies, religious conflict, UNESCO preservation, and the fragility of peace. I didn’t always need every detour, but I respected the ambition behind them. She’s asking the reader to see tourism not as escape, but as a way of becoming less provincial, less passive, and perhaps a little more responsible.
Managing the Bucket List: Volume I is less about checking boxes than about resisting the smallness that can come from staying too settled in one view of life. Its spirit is generous, practical, and urgent: go while you can, learn while you’re there, and let the world revise you. I’d recommend this book to thoughtful travelers, retirees planning a major season of exploration, lifelong learners, and readers who enjoy travel writing with a strong historical and geopolitical backbone rather than a purely lyrical one.
Pages: 544 | ASIN: B0G9BBB4DY
