The Cabin
- carolblankenship37
- Jun 27
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 6
April 18, 2025
I took a nostalgic trip this week to my dad’s cabin of 50 years. It’s an hour drive from where I live now and is the foundation for a lifetime of memories for me, my dad, two older brothers, and my own kids and is what originally brought us to Southern Utah. Dad sold the cabin about seven years ago, and I’d not been back since. It was a peaceful trip to slowly drive the dirt roads that are so familiar—every bend, every view of the surrounding mountains and hillsides a familiar imprint in my head.
No one was at the cabin that now belongs to a young family—ironically one with three children—two older boys and a girl. In fact, I only saw one person and a dog in the entire canyon though there’s evidence many are returning to their cabins or camping pads since the snows of the winter have melted. I tromped around a bit on the land around the cabin but never approached the structure itself. I prefer the images of my memory. The exterior has changed enough to remove it somewhat from absolute familiarity. Instead, I see the cabin as it was, painted light green with a wood-shingled roof instead of the tin that has replaced it.
Over the years, several of the largest aspen had to be cut down as their age and lean endangered the cabin or safety of the area, but the blue spruce remain. I gathered pinecones from these now large and established trees. I whispered hello to these old friends that oversaw my change from a curious three year old to an elementary-age adventurer climbing the hills after her brothers to a college student up for a weekend to escape the heat of Las Vegas and soak in the solitude of the woods to a young mom introducing her first toddler to the playground of her own childhood and then with two young kids, teaching them how to climb slippery slopes of sand and pine needles and how to come down a mountain and stay on your feet—lessons seemingly intuitive to me but were learned early in life on these same hills and rocks. And now, on this visit, I’m twice the age of my dad when he bought this property and established it as a foundational home for his kids and grandkids.
I climbed the hill across the gravel road from the cabin to what was very early on named ‘Danny’s Rock’ after my brother who ‘discovered’ it. It’s sandstone and has crumbled and morphed over the years from the big chunk of rock it was over half a century ago. When I was a kid, the initials of an early cattle herder were engraved on the front of the rock. Those are long gone, worn and dissolved into the slippery sand of the hillside. Interestingly, upon first approach around a large spruce that now shields much of the rock from the downhill view, it appeared Danny's Rock had split into three pieces. I paused and smiled thinking it was appropriate that now, so many years later, it was three rocks, one for each of us kids who clambered and played on and around it for years. As I climbed closer though, I saw that it was still one rock, but the center had worn away as sandstone does and left it a very different shape from what it once was.
Once past Danny’s Rock, I climbed onward to Coyote’s Head, a rock outcropping that overlooks the cabin and provides an amazing view of the surrounding mountains and forest. Actually, the cabin is no longer visible as trees have grown tall and obstructed that view. But as kids, we could see the top portion of the A-frame and when Dad called us with his distinctive whistle, we headed down the hill at breakneck speed for breakfast, lunch or chores, whatever the calling.
On my approach to Danny’s Rock, I reflected that at 60 and with worn knees, this seemed a faster and easier climb than for my younger self with the energy of childhood and urgent need to keep up with my older brothers. I’m not tall now, but I suppose longer and stronger legs than a five-year-old and six weeks of acclimating to 5000 feet counts for something. Once I was at Coyote’s Head, I had to smile at a gap between the rocks that I simply stepped over but when racing after my brothers as a kid had been reason for pause before a quick scramble across the gap.
These mountains, this cabin, these rocks and trees and this legacy my dad built for us have shaped me, woven deep threads of love and appreciation for natural beauty and experiences that push me beyond trepidation to seek adventure and claim the prize of standing on Coyote’s Head, or some other precarious outcropping, for the view and sense of accomplishment, to hear your voice echoed back to you from a canyon or to simply lift your face to the beauty of a breeze flowing over familiar hills and through the aspen.
The history here—lived, shared, re-lived and re-told—has shaped each of us who lived it first hand and for those later influenced by this place, this love affair with the sky, the stars, the cliffs and trees, by freedom on hills to find your space and forge your place into this tapestry simply referred to as the cabin. Like a code word, we all know what it means and understand the significance it holds in our family history and personal evolution.
After I’d seen as much as I wanted and taken a few pictures, I sat in my car, ate lunch, reminisced, and journaled. I was about thirty yards from the original campsite where Dad camped with his three young kids while the cabin was built; fifty yards from where I took a favorite picture of my daughter, now in her early thirties, but three at the time sporting a Lion King Simba shirt and John Lennon kid sunglasses, Twizzlers in hand, full of curiosity and attitude as we set out for a walk. Ghosts of myself walk, climb, and run about this place—me and my brothers traipsing down this same road to a nearby cabin where Mr. and Mrs. Hagin will offer us pancakes, which we will innocently accept as though we were simply out for a walk and had no idea Mrs. Hagin anticipated our well-timed arrival; chasing after Mark and Dan on climbs, probably pleading that they wait for me as my little legs ran as fast as they could to keep up; riding the horses around the cabin, watching them and ‘petting’ them in the pole corral Dad built; roasting marshmallows in the fire circle made of volcanic rock, the boys pointing out bats flying overhead trying to scare their little sister who instead felt safe sitting in the circle of her dad’s arms; riding in the back of Dad’s '70 Ford truck singing at the top of my lungs while dust swirled in the gravel road behind us; lying in the loft of the cabin listening to the whisper of the aspen leaves in the breeze, music that without fail takes me to this place, a familiar soundtrack to some of my best and most formative memories.
There are some memories that have been planted by my older brother, Dan, who remembers many things I’ve not retained. He tells me of the time he and I crafted a bridle out of twine from the hay bales so we could ‘capture’ Duchess and ride her around the corral. Duchess, a quarter horse purchased at three years old and high spirited when it involved my dad but wonderfully calm and compliant with us kids, stands as a constant in all of my childhood memories of the cabin. Danny tells of our stepmom’s anxiety when she spotted us from the kitchen window as we both straddled Duchess bareback, Danny guiding her around the corral with his makeshift bridle. In reality, Duchess allowed all of this—the scramble onto her broad back, circling the corral as though this whisp of a bridle tickling her nose meant anything. While she pranced and shifted as soon as Dad had one foot in the stirrup, she was calm and gentle with us and that’s my strongest memory of her—her spirit and stubbornness and yet her very gentle heart, not unlike the man she sparred with! Like many horsemen, Dad’s bond with Duchess belied their temperamental displays. After many years together, Dad provided a comfortable pasture for Duchess until she died of old age in her late twenties. I’m proud of my dad for many things and this kindness to Duchess is one of them.
And so, I drive home, my first time to have an address of my own in Utah, a resident now of this state that’s held my heart’s home almost my entire life. It’s a different coming home, my move to this place that I’ve carried with me to the Midwest for college, marriage, raising children and life as a mom with grown children. It’s a return to be near Dad who adopted this area as a young man and created a legacy that now seems part of our DNA and has shaped each of us as the wind and water have shaped these mountains. I’m grateful.
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