Stories inspire us to write from meaningful experiences. What you may not know, though, is that to write stories, is to develop new dendrite brain cell connections in your linguistic intelligence. Not a bad takeaway when you consider that writing process can also ensure you a younger brain….

What fun or moving story projects itself on the back screen of your mind, that you could write as a way to exercise your brain? I’ll start.

Ten years ago, during a skidoo race to the Igloolik Airport , I almost missed a once-a-week flight to another remote community on the north tip of Baffin Island. It was Saturday, I was 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle and the mercury was about 70 degrees below zero. For all those reasons, I counted myself lucky to get Cecilia, head of the Government Social Work, to roar up to my home in a skidoo, in a last ditch effort to get me there. Yikes! Did I tell you yet about frigid conditions on Baffin Island – up beside Greenland?

Back to my story though… ten minutes before flight time, we hopped onto a small broken skidoo seat, piled my four bags anywhere they’d stick, and Cecilia promised to race back for one bag that refused to stay with us. What a ride! We zoomed through Igloolik’s snow-packed, uneven ditches, out of town to the airport, as if headed down Aspen mountain in a ski race.

Cecilia skidded into gullies over bumps and teetered on the edge of snow banks while I held onto blowing bags, and held my breath. Inuit seem undaunted by the tundra’s’ icy obstacles, and the weaving and tipping of her race machine seemed part of the whole arctic adventure.

Unprepared for a skidoo, or the sub zero temperatures, and even less prepared for the rugged terrain we encountered, I fought to hold bags flying in the wind. Although I could see little of anything that wasn’t white, from behind frozen eyelashes, I caught Cecilia’s smile – a symbol of sheer conquest.

Moments after I spilled into the tiny airport, and tried to thaw ice that seemed to form over my eyeballs, Cecilia burst through the airport door - red-faced and smiling. Hurling a large frozen bag in front of me, she pronounced. “Hope there’s no breakables in this thing… Yer bag flew off the skidoo three times… but I got ‘em here.”

“No problem.” I shot back, “It could have been me flying off that skidoo” And it nearly was.

To write this little skidoo story today, is to relive a keen lesson I learned up past the North Pole. It’s a tale about gratitude for people’s generosity, and about the Canadian Arctic’s hidden wonder. Looking back at this yarn, reminds me a bit of the wonder many brains hide – in uncharted landscapes, now that I think of it.

New dendrite connections keep your brain alive, and writing a story revitalizes these neuron networks. You don’t have to go to the High Arctic to find that story, either. Just jot a few details to share one of your fun or moving moments, and you’ve already started a writing journey that adds youth. So what’s your story?