A person collects many memories throughout one’s life path. Some of them are good, while other – not as much. Even more things are forgotten. Many memories are lost while a person is going through life. But the weirdest thing is that whatever happens throughout the person’s life, and whatever strange and unexpected events and emotions one experiences, the brightest memories are those of childhood. Even in the end of life the childhood memories come to a person as bright sunbeams, being half-real and half-magical. It happens because one’s childhood is full of new things and unexpected discoveries, and each day brings something different. This is the time when reality is mixed with magic, and ordinary things can easily turn into extraordinary. Moreover, this is the time when the tiniest thing seems extremely important and can lead to the whole new world. Therefore, it is not surprising that one of the most meaningful places in my life is from my childhood.

Each boy and girl enjoys holidays much more when there’s a chance to leave the city and go to a different place. New people and places around create a background for so many various experiences! Our family was lucky enough to own a cabin in the woods. It was a place for all our holidays: Christmas and New Year vacations, summers, and even spring and autumn were sometimes spent there. This cabin has become a treasured memory not only for me, but also for the whole family and, even though no one has visited the place for many years, we still remember it with a warm smile. The cabin in the woods in our family has become a synonym to “the old days”, which were full of serene fun, comfort, and adventure.

A stranger would have never recognized the cabin from the road. One had to turn from the highway and go down a small road for another 15 minutes. But the first trick was to find the right turn. The main road was going through the forest, with multiple small trails going deep into the woods. At first, shortly after father bought the cabin, he used to make mistakes and turn earlier (and once we ended up in a grey gloomy swamp that smelled like wet dogs), or later, and in that case we ended either in a summer camp that looked pretty sinister when abandoned for the cold season, or on one of the local farms, which stood miles away from each other, but have always been very welcoming with their smiling tanned owners and warm sweet cocoa. It was quite hard to find the right path, but after some 10 wrong turns we’ve clearly remembered the right one. Even now I can easily make a turn after a dozen or so birches and right before the old oak with an enormous hollow at the very bottom.

After a right through the forest, down a bumpy and rocky passage through the trees that made some half a dozen turns and which no one dared to call a road, we ended up at the cabin. It was neither a luxury country house, nor a forest shack. A steady single-store building built in the middle of the 20th century was quite enough to give warmth and comfort to one family. With three bedrooms, a common room with fireplace and a tiny kitchen, this house was some kind of a safe heaven for all of us. It looked simple both outside and inside. Although it lacked stable electricity and proper plumbing, a huge fireplace that kept us warm on stormy November eves compensated it. The house had a wonderful summer terrace with a lake view, which was really loud on sunny days when warm sunrays were jumping between the leaves, glittering on the water surface and reflecting from the entire shiny kitchenware that mother brought for lunch.

There was one huge oak table on the outside. It could easily fit not only our noisy family, but also another twenty people. It seemed like this summer-table compensated for the lack of any family dinner space inside. The kitchen was too little for anything but the most necessary, while the common room was full of coffee tables. I think, there were at least three or four of them, and each of the tables (they were of different heights and sizes) held a mismatched lamp. It did not take us much time to turn this lack of comfort into a lot of fun. We’ve invented numerous games with eating at different table each day of Christmas or sitting altogether in a tight circle and pretending that we’re having a cold-cold winter. Even without a common table there were other things that united us.

Nothing reminds of the memory as its’ smell. Sometimes it happens unexpectedly – you breathe in, close your eyes and see the picture of a Christmas morning or a summer afternoon. And each time I hear the smell of wet wood I go back in the memories to rainy days in the cabin. Although we tried to stay inside (I say “tried” because it is hard to keep children in a room when there’s a whole world of various snails and frogs), windows were always open, and the smell of wet woods from the outside mixed with the burning fire inside. And when it rained really heavily, we, kids, set near the open window, breathed in the wet smell of the rainy forest and told each other stories of weird creatures that lived deep in the forest.

That cabin, our “old days” and “safe heaven”, will be the place in which I’ve experienced the most magical moments of my life. It was a life on the edge between reality and magic, when each day brought some new events and ideas and each night we went to sleep with a bunch of things to remember. Of course, most of those childhood memories have gone, but the overall picture of the wooden cabin on the lakeside, huge summer table and tiny kitchen will remain the safe place of my memory.

The article was prepared by the best writing service.