One of the only constants in my life has been the presence of our family cabin. My family moved often during the early part of my life, a total of eight times by the time I turned eleven – but every summer, no matter where we lived, weekends were always reserved for visiting the family cabin. We would pack up the SUV on Friday night after my Dad got out of work, and drive up I-75 to the cabin at whatever speed necessary to catch the last 10:00 p.m. ferry to the cabin. Arriving at the ferry dock was always a rushed event of pulling the car up to the side of the boat, unloading all of our luggage, and then boarding the boat – sometimes in as few as five minutes. The Captain’s motto was “The Ferry Waits for No One.” Luckily, more than a decade of carrying coolers and suitcases onto the ferry has given me respectable arm strength, and the ability to lug the entire contents of my friend’s closet up a flight of stairs and down three hallways. Perseverance is one of the many virtues that growing up at a cabin has given me.

According to family lore, my parents first arrived on the island to look at a different cabin; but as the realtor passed a glittering sand-covered beach, my parents forced the realtor to pull over, and as they gazed out over Lake Huron, my parents insisted that the realtor, “find them a cabin as close to this beach as possible." It was the summer of 1997 when my parents first stumbled upon a tiny cabin located right across from “Snow Beach." When my parents bought the cabin, it was a small hunting cabin with an outhouse and a squirrel problem, that only had the luxury of running water when the roof leaked during a storm. This summer, we celebrate the twentieth anniversary of owning the family cabin, which thankfully now features such modern luxuries as a bathroom and new roof!

The cabin was where I first learned to do many of my favorite activities. I first learned to swim, fish, and paddleboard in the crystal-clear depths of Lake Huron as my parents sat on the sand-white beach across from our cabin. At night, when it was too cool to swim any longer, my Dad taught me how to start campfires. My Dad had a signature style of starting fires, which was known throughout the entire island, because he never considered a fire successful until it was at least as tall as he was. The cabin was where I was also first taught how to drive: first a golf-cart, then the family’s SUV, and then a car with a manual transmission. Admittedly, I’m far from perfecting the art of driving a manual car, as the last time my friend and I drove it, I ran into a tree in a failed attempt to turn around. Luckily, the cabin is a place of many failed attempts, and never ever giving up.

Vacationing at the cabin also gave me my first taste of independence. Usually, my parents would be concerned about me being kidnapped or whatever else parents fear might happen to their child if they aren’t within ear-shot at all times, but when we were on vacation my parents let me walk around by myself and spend hours at the neighbor’s cottages without any concern for my whereabouts. The community on the island that we vacation on is tight knit, and is reminiscent of a small, Midwestern town out of a 1960s sitcom. The Island is a place of “just stopping in” at a neighbor’s cabin and staying for six hours, weekly square-dances and community game nights, and impromptu summer barbecues where everyone you know is magically there.

For the past twenty years, the cabin has been a source of magical experiences and creative inspiration for me, like nowhere else I have ever experienced. The people I have met are some of the kindest and funniest people I have ever met, and the number of memories I’ve made there are unparalleled.