The Cabin

I remember the smell of the old pine cabin, its wood panels soaked with decades of campfire smoke, spilled coffee, and the faint mustiness of forgotten summers. It always hits me the second I step inside, like the ghost of a memory I didn’t know I missed.

That cabin, tucked away in the woods by Pine Lake, has been in our family for generations, though calling it "family-owned" feels a bit formal for a structure that barely clings to its foundation.

The summer I’m thinking about—probably the most important summer of my life—was the year my dad decided to sell it.

“Mel,” he said, in that gravelly, I’m-not-debating tone of his, “it’s time to let it go. The place is falling apart. We don’t use it anymore. It’s just sitting there.”

He wasn’t wrong. The roof sagged in places, the dock was half submerged, and the squirrels had claimed the attic in a coup long before I was born. But it wasn’t just a place. Not to me. To me, the cabin was alive, a creature with creaky bones and stories in its walls.

So, naturally, I panicked. “You can’t sell it, Dad! It’s… it’s tradition!” I flailed my arms for emphasis, knocking over his coffee. He didn’t flinch, just handed me a napkin like he’d been expecting me to erupt.

“That ‘tradition’ hasn’t been touched since your mother’s seventieth birthday,” he said, his voice heavy. “You and your brother don’t go up there. I certainly don’t. What’s the point of keeping something no one cares for?”

I cared.

I cared deeply. I just hadn’t been back in years because—well, life had gotten busy. There were deadlines and bills and a fiancé who thought “rustic” meant eating quinoa at a food truck. But that conversation with my dad hit me like a gut punch. I couldn’t let the cabin go—not without one last summer.

The first day back, the air smelled sharper than I remembered. Pine needles blanketed the forest floor like a quilt, muffling my footsteps as I approached the cabin.

My brother, Leo, was supposed to meet me there, but as usual, he was late. “Traffic,” he’d probably say, which was laughable since Pine Lake was in the middle of nowhere and the only road leading here saw more deer than cars.

“Guess it’s just you and me for now,” I murmured to the cabin. Its warped windows stared back at me like tired eyes. I pushed open the door, and it groaned on its hinges—a sound as familiar as my own heartbeat.

Inside, the kitchen still had Mom’s ancient yellow teapot on the stove, its spout chipped from the time she’d flung it at Dad during a particularly heated argument about the merits of meatloaf.

The living room was a clutter of mismatched furniture, each piece a relic of some distant yard sale. And there, above the fireplace, hung the mounted bass Leo caught when he was fifteen, its glassy eyes perpetually wide in fishy surprise.

I smiled despite myself. “Still here, huh?” I said to the bass, half-expecting it to answer. It didn’t, of course. That would’ve been weird.

By the time Leo showed up—arms full of grocery bags and a sheepish grin—it was late afternoon. He looked the same as always: tall, scruffy, and radiating an aura of perpetual casualness that made people trust him immediately.

He’d somehow finagled his way into a lucrative career in freelance marketing, which was baffling since I still wasn’t sure he knew how to use PowerPoint.

“Traffic,” he said, as predicted, dumping the groceries onto the counter.

“Of course,” I replied, arching an eyebrow. “All those fawns with nowhere to be.”

He grinned and handed me a bag of chips. “You’re lucky I showed up at all. This place smells like mildew.”

“Just like your apartment,” I shot back, and we both laughed.

That night, after a dinner of slightly charred hot dogs and marshmallows toasted to perfection, we sat by the fire pit. The flames flickered, casting dancing shadows on the trees, and the stars spread across the sky like spilled sugar. I leaned back in my chair, cradling a mug of hot chocolate, and sighed.

“Do you remember the summer we built that treehouse?” I asked, staring up at the gnarled oak by the edge of the property.

Leo chuckled. “Remember? I still have a scar from when I fell off the ladder. Mom freaked out and made me sit with an ice pack for, like, three hours. She was convinced I had a concussion.”

“You might’ve,” I teased. “Would explain a lot.”

He threw a marshmallow at me, and I dodged, laughing. But the memory lingered, warm and bittersweet. We’d spent that whole summer hammering and sawing, arguing over whether it should have a trapdoor or a balcony. In the end, it had both, though neither was particularly functional.

“Think it’s still up there?” Leo asked, nodding toward the oak.

“Only one way to find out,” I said, setting down my mug.

The climb was harder than I remembered, the bark rough under my hands. But when we reached the top, there it was: the remnants of our childhood fortress, sagging and splintered but undeniably still there. We sat on the edge, legs dangling, and for a moment, I felt like a kid again—invincible and full of impossible dreams.

“Mel,” Leo said after a long silence, his voice unusually serious. “Do you think Dad’s right? About selling the cabin?”

I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I looked out at the lake, its surface glittering under the moonlight. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I do know that this place means something. Even if it’s falling apart, even if it’s impractical, it’s… it’s ours.”

Leo nodded, his expression thoughtful. “Yeah,” he said softly. “It is.”

The next morning, we decided to fix the dock. It was Leo’s idea, which surprised me, since manual labor wasn’t exactly his forte. But he insisted, and before I knew it, we were knee-deep in tools and planks, bickering like we were kids again.

“Hold the board steady!” I snapped as I hammered a nail.

“I am holding it steady,” Leo shot back. “You’re just bad at hammering.”

“You’re bad at everything,” I retorted, and he snorted, shaking his head.

By the end of the day, the dock was still a mess, but it was our mess, and that felt like progress.

That night, as we sat on our newly semi-repaired dock, feet dangling over the water, I felt a strange sense of peace. The cabin wasn’t perfect. It never had been. But maybe that was the point. It wasn’t about perfection—it was about the memories, the stories, the laughter echoing in its walls.

On our last morning there, Leo and I stood by the fireplace, staring at the bass.

“You think we should take it down before we leave?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. It belongs here.”

He nodded, and we walked outside, the door creaking shut behind us. The air was crisp, the sun just beginning to rise, and for a moment, the world felt still.

“I’m glad we came back,” Leo said, his voice quiet.

“Me too,” I replied, and I meant it.

We didn’t say much—just listened to the gentle lap of the lake against the shore and the occasional chirp of a bird cutting through the stillness. It felt like the cabin was listening too, taking in our presence the way it had always done, quietly and without complaint.

When we finally packed up the cars, Dad’s gravelly voice rang in my head. It’s time to let it go. Maybe he was right. But as I glanced back at the cabin—its tilted roof, its sagging walls—I felt a tug deep in my chest. Letting go didn’t mean forgetting.

I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture, the morning light soft against the wood, the trees framing it like an old postcard. Leo caught me and smirked. “For the memories?”

“For the memories,” I said, smiling.