Some places in life are the spots where you want to spend as much time as you can. At, this spot for me was my grandparent’s cabin. It was located on Big Butter Nut Lake in a little town of Luck.  This place had everything! It had a golf cart I could have my parents drive me around in, speeding up and down the narrow street behind the cabin. It was on a lake so we could ski and wake board all day long. The basement of the cabin had a Nintendo 64 which consumed my nights once it was too dark to go outside.  Nights were spent sitting around roaring campfires as my family would sit and watch as the ash and cinders fly into the sky past the three huge pine trees that dwarf the right side of the cabin. My aunt Nancy and my uncle Todd along with my cousin Sarah and my cousin Nick regularly visited the cabin with us. Having a place like this is how you create memories and shape your future for the rest of your life.

My favorite part of the cabin wasn’t the lake or the bonfire pit. It, my little tractor. My tractor was small, I would guess about four feet long and made mostly out of plastic. It was all green and yellow like a John Deere.  It had a small black wheel that would let you control where you went. The machine also had pedals that go around and worked just like a bike. I don’t know for sure but I felt like I could really speed on the tractor. Going as fast as I could on different made up courses for example, to the top of the drive way and back. Or, I would drive the tractor in a zigzag course in between the pine trees. It was all I would do as my parents were hanging out on the deck, or by a bonfire at night I was still going strong. I even strapped a flash light to the front of my tractor so I could see where I was going. The flash light also helped my parents keep an eye on me. The tractor made the times at the cabin fun and full of joy even when my parents or grandparents were distracted, talking to other adults. When it got late and I was ready for bed, I would park it in between the air conditioning unit and the chimney on the right side of the cabin.

When I was 7 years old, it was summer sometime around mid-July. My grandparents had my family over for a long weekend to have fun on and around the lake. We went boating and water skiing and I of course rode on my tractor. Round and around in circles I went for hours on end. The yard along the corners of the cabin, or close to the big pines there was dirt tracks where the wheels of my tractor dig up the grass and pine needles creating packed dirt ruts. When night came I was exhausted. I got lazy and parked my tractor next to the pine trees, then went into the cabin. Inside the cabin as I was getting tucked in, my mother told me that there was going to be a storm. She also told me that if I got scared I could come sleep with them.

I woke up at about six and was usually the first up in the morning. The first thing I did every morning when I was at the cabin was to wake up my grandma, I called her “Grammy.” That day when I woke her up, I’ll never forget her face of shock as her chin dropped as she sat up in bed to look out the window. Her window faced the lake overlooking the sunrise on the water, but that day we couldn’t see the lake. All we saw that day was a tangled mess of pine boughs and tree limbs covering the yard. Grammy woke up my grandpa and my parents, they then all ran out of the door to assess the damage. The trunk of the pine tree landed about two feet from the deck along with some of the branches lay across the deck to barley brush the cabin. The deck had a few boards that were warped and some were broken. I distinctly remember the air reeked of pine sap. The smell was so overpowering my eyes started to water. What I wanted to do was grab my tractor and head to the other side of the cabin to get away from the awful smell. But my tractor was nowhere to be found. Then I remembered I placed it right next to the pine trees and I panicked. I remember running to the splintered end of the tree where it had snapped about two feet from the ground. About seven feet away from the stump, I saw a black steering wheel next to a pile of mangled and shattered plastic all yellow and green.  The tree had only hit the front part of the tractor so the rear of the tractor was sticking up in the air at an angle. Most of the tractor shattered like a glass vase. The lower part of the tractor must have been made of a different type of plastic because instead of shattering the plastic bent, warped and flattened into a twisted green pancake.  All I did the rest of the day was cry.

My parents tried to make things better. They went out and bought me a new tractor. The new tractor was bigger, better, and faster. But it wasn’t the same. The feeling and excitement I had driving the old tractor in circles died on the sad day in mid-July when the wind storm tore down one of the  large white pines next to the cabin onto my most prized possession. I think it may have also been my age that caused me to lose my liking for it. My old tractor was crushed in July, and my parents got me my new one for Christmas. So by late may when I could finally use the tractor again I was a full nine months older. Most likely I had grown out of my liking for the tractor.

The next step in the time line of my cabin was when I was 9 and a half. My Aunt and Uncle were looking for property to build a house on a lake. So my grandparents being generous sold there cabin lot to them for a very low price. My aunt was a nurse, and my uncle a chiropractor so they could afford a nice house on the lake. The small cabin was not up to their expectations. Instead of remodeling or adding onto the cabin that I cherished they decided to burn it to the ground and start over. I knew that my aunt and uncle now owned the cabin but, what I didn’t know that they were going to burn it down. So in late December, I was told we were going to go to the cabin to snowmobile and ice skate. When we got there I was very confused because I noticed my grandparent’s car and my aunt’s car but there, right alongside the cabin was a huge red fire truck. I immediately asked my mom what was going on. She then informed me of the sad news. The cabin was as she said, “in the way,” of the house plan that Aunt Nancy wanted. I was disappointed at first but my mom told me of all the great fun things that we could do in the new house. I wasn’t happy at first but I grew to accept the idea. The small neighborhood that lived on the street gathered as the fire fighters got it all set up. They poured lighter fluid in all the rooms and smashed all the windows to let the fire spread quickly and become more intense. My grandparents had already removed all of their belongings from the cabin. They left two old sofas and a mattress inside so they could burn them without having to pay to take them to the dump. The fire fighters lit a flare and tossed it in through the front door with a loud whooshing sound the floor was on fire. Within minute the cabin was engulfed with flame. The neighbors of the area watched from the ice on the lake as the whole cabin began to crumble. I remember the only thing left of the cabin was the skinny chimney standing tall with char marks and ghostly out lines on two sides of where the walls touched it. Since it was made of stone it never fell to the fire, instead fell to a winch connected to the back end of the red fire truck.

A beautiful house was built on the lot it has a perched roof with big windows overlooking the lake. It’s a cabin style house with timber sides and green trim. It is a beautiful house. But, it was nothing compared to the memories and good times that the cabin produced. Long days out on the lake. Along with days in the basement playing Monopoly and Nintendo 64, paired with the lasting memories of my tractor and the roaring fires are what shape your life and future.