Personal Narrative: The Olson Family Cabin

Up on the mountain tops, just past Payson and just before Strawberry, lies my home away from home. It’s the good old, Olson family cabin. Sitting at approximately 5300 feet elevation, Pine, Arizona is naturally 20 degrees cooler than Phoenix. It is not your typical log cabin. Rather, it is a small house with a large loft, almost as big as the house. It is surrounded by tall, rich green pine trees, and for that reason my family has dubbed it “the cabin.” The Olson family cabin has had a profound affect on my life because of the lessons it taught me growing up, the people I spent time there with, and the activities it has inspired. It’s astonishing how a little place can have such a large impact on ones life. How one cabin could teach, a growing child, so many life lessons. The cabin never failed to deliver these lessons, from basic home improvement projects to
Most of which still take up all my free time. Being located in the mountains I can just walk out of my backdoor and begin a hike. Prior to the cabin I couldn't figure out why people would just hike and walk for no reason. It took one little hike to change my entire thought process. On my very first one I saw deer, elk, squirrels and countless beautiful birds. I saw a creek surrounded by luscious flowers of all colors and thorny berry bushes. Falling in love with the outdoors, my brother and I took it a step further and decided to try out camping. Starting in the back yard sleeping near the house with wifi, we slowly transitioned into hiking miles away with our entire camp on our backs. You can say we got addicted to camping fairly quickly. Recently we began fishing, my absolute favorite activity to date. It only takes a quick hour long drive along one of northern Arizona’s beautiful highways to get to our fishing hole. Surrounded by huge boulders and and the flowing verde river, we found the perfect spot to fish and take in the immaculate