Personal Narrative: Lake Tahoe

It was an early December morning. The roads were slick with a thin layer of ice. The air was crisp with a winter chill and there was a slight drizzle falling from the sky. I was riding in my dad’s truck to my grandma’s, who babysat me while my parents were at work. My little brother Kaden was also with us. At the time I was four and Kaden (my brother) was 4 months. The day started off normal, Kaden was sleeping as usually and I was looking out the window watching raindrops race each other. At that moment I remember feeling happy and content just ready to drift off to sleep, when Suddenly the tires started Squealing. My mind was then cast into a sea of darkness that seem to have no escape.

Yeah, that’s how much snow was on me! I tried doing toe edge for the remainder of the run, and at the last second before our first run was over, I finally went on my toe edge. You couldn’t believe the joy and excitement I was feeling. Max came up to me and gave me a high five and we proceeded to the chair lift again. While we were on the chair, Max said “aight Virun now you can do toe edge, try doing it on the steep hill”, I replied with a nod. We quickly got off the chair, put on our bindings and went to a steeper route. I went down the hill first and reluctantly, I switched between my toe and heel edge like I was a pro! While I was going down the hill I could hear the wind whistling against my helmet and sound of my board carving on the snow. I was so hyped that I finally learned Snowboarding. After all those years only going on small hills on my heel edge, I finally was doing toe edge. We went up the hill for a couple of more runs, and just like you already know we got on the chairlift and put on our bindings once we got off. We went all the way to the right side of the hill and carved down the soft snow. While I was going down, my board hit a small ice ball and my board caught an edge and I landed hard on my butt.

Imagine being subjected to the solitude of the mountains, going a week without a proper toilet, clean water, or even cell service. Walking miles upon miles, in seemingly hellish temperature just to do something for someone else. Welcome to my journey last February. Roughly a year ago, I endured a week-long Mission Trip in Guatemala. First reading that thoughts probably came up along the lines of "oh that's neat, but what's so fun about that?" For one second, stop thinking about whatever you're thinking and picture this. A hot, quiet day with the sun beating down on your skin. You're sitting under a luscious green tree trying to find as much shade possible while you watch everything go on around you. Children, barely clothed and barefoot laughing

As a baby, I was still just the same Ohio State fan. I would chant and cheer for the scarlet and grey. I made a slight pronunciation issue that I will forever laugh at because it said Ohio Steak instead of Ohio State. I was defiantly the laughing stock of the family on Saturday’s and now no one can call me a fake fan because I was rooting for the Buckeye’s before I could even pronounce the words correctly. In the winter of my kindergarten year, a major snowstorm struck in Ohio. I walked out and the white, frosty snow struck my retina. I was standing in the snow that was taller than me. My grandpa came over to snow blow our driveway. That was my first snow day that I remember. When I was around eight years old, we had settled in on base in San

I’m on a mountain, I just overcame my first obstacle the chair lift. Which I thought would be harder than it was I miraculously didn’t fall or knock over the other skiers/snowboarders. I glanced back up at the gleaming mountain becoming easily distracted by the flawless stroke of every turn as the pros make their way down. I say quietly to myself “Isn’t this suppose to be a beginners hill?” They have gopros strapped to their helmets and are racing each other down. All I can think in that moment is how am I supposed to be able to do that. Those suave perfect turns the gentle touch the snowboard has with the fresh powder from that morning. They look at each other with excitement in their eyes and adventure in their hearts. I feel completely uncomfortable and awkward. Pushing off and hit the ground face first. The ice cold snow melts onto my face, I laugh at myself and hope to god the people around me didn’t see that. No one was paying attention to me they all had this type of confidence and excitement to learn and grow. I stood back up and headed down the hill with all force, not knowing how to turn I abruptly put my snowboard on healedge and slammed to a stop. Little did I know I was already halfway down the hill.

It felt like a knife was stabbing me right in the leg. I noticed a considerable amount of other campers staring at me as I was laying on the ground in pain. “Ouch! Oh my gosh!” I held my leg as I yelled loudly. I don’t remember exactly how it felt when it first happened, but I do remember that right when I hit the solid concrete floor, I knew what had happened. Never again was I going to mess around with one of those skateboards, especially since I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. My head was spinning with confusion. I tried to stand up, except I fell right back down in even more pain. Everybody at camp was looking at me as I was crying, holding onto my leg as tight as I could.

It was a cold, snowy day. Jakey, Scott and I got ready to go to school. Jakey was 17, I was 14, and scott was 20. Jakey and I had to go to school while our dad was dropping off Scott for a College interview for MIT. We didn’t take the bus that day because of how cold it was at the bus stop, so our dad drove us to school. On the way to school, Jakey and I got into a friendly argument on who would win that nights hockey game. It was The Jets vs Wild game. The Wild were Jakeys favorite team and the Jets were mine. “The Jets are extremely bad, there is no way they will beat the Wild”, he said. The argument got heated and I accidentally kicked the back of my dad seat hard. The roads were extremely icy and we went flying into the ditch. I would regret that moment for the rest of my life. *****

There is a trip that not many do because of how many people who do not make it back from the hike. What people hike up is a waterfall is called Yosemite Falls and it is the tallest waterfall in California. So when my family and I go camping there we always talk about how we should try to hike it, but we never actually do because of how scared we are. One year though some of my family members and I decided to go to the top because of how much we have wanted to do it for so long. So what we did was we all went to bed early so we could wake up early. This hike is a long one the trip up and down if you walk fast can be about an eight-hour hike. We did not have that much experience hiking up anything this enormous besides a hike that was three miles

Once, I was a little snowflake on top of a mountain. Life was good on Aspen Mountain with the exception of being trampled by skiers. Until one day when a skier wipes out on top of me. As he was falling, Me and my brothers were swept into the man's jacket. Most of my brothers tumbled out as the man stumbled for his Ski poles but I was stuck. I was consumed With panic, praying somehow, someway I would get out before I melt. As the man started to ski down the mountain again, I started to feel the heat. Boiling, sizzling, searing heat which I have never felt before, and don’t want to ever feel again. A weird sensation began to set in, like I was melting away. MELTING AWAY!?! I frantically thought. Could It get any worse than this?

The day had finally come, I was going to the Wilson’s house, it was a cold January afternoon and once I arrived Heidi wanted to go sledding. The snow hill was on the other side of the neighborhood so we had to walk, we were only there for an hour or two before we got bored Heidi wanted to go into the woods because there was a little-frozen pond that Heidi liked to jump on and watch all the pieces break around her, don’t ask why because I am not really sure. We stayed at the pond for awhile and then we found and are of the woods that we could build a play structure in. We were in the woods for what felt like forever. We did not realize that the sun was setting and the day was coming to an end, Heidi and I were so tired it was hard to walk home, we decided not to grab the sleds and we would just grab them in the

I was standing there at the edge of a fifty foot tall cliff petrified with anxiety and fear. This wasn't a stupid attempt at suicide, rather a stupid attempt at having fun before summer inevitably comes. I knew my summer already wasn't going to be fun, I signed up for algebra 2 summer school classes. So I and a few friends decided we would go to Maunawili Falls a 6 mile hike to a waterfall with a 50 foot cliff. It took us 2 hours of being covered in sweat, going through bushes, up and down hills overrun by mosquitoes to get there. Once I got to the waterfall I immediately dropped my stuff at a nearby boulder and began climbing up a slope leading to the cliff. Being ahead of all my friends up the slope, I could feel my heartbeat beating harder as every step went by while simultaneously thinking "if I turn back now it'll be easier to go down the hill". But eventually I made it to the top, with the first thing that I saw was a

The day was just after my brother’s birthday and we had just finished celebrating his birthday. My brother was more surprised, however, by the amount of snow that covered the yards outside. We both awoke to a sight much more impressive than that of December, a white landscape obscuring everything laying on the ground, including the cars. My brother and I changed faster than firemen getting ready for a rescue, as we ran outside to see the fascinating snow that surrounded our neighborhood. Three inches of pure fluffy snowflakes covered as far as my eye could see. Soon, my neighbors also came outside to discover the masterpiece that lay in front of them. Children of all ages brought out sleds and began sliding down our hill. My dog began jumping and running around like a scared rabbit as he ran through the thick snow. Up and down the street families were playing outside, laughing and having a good time The delight and happiness that filled our neighborhood was something truly

When me my dad and older sister start to head down to the lift my ski binding is to loose and my ski came off. Luckily I was not that far from our car. So we went back to the car and fix the problem. Finally we get on the lift I was really excited. Over at the run called sun boll we head down. Right off the bat I’m stuck and have to roll out. I get stuck about a billion more times tell we get to the bottom.

Albert Einstein once stated, “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” I remember that quote from Jeopardy, but I never actually thought of anything of it. The category was transcendentalism and I remembered that pretty clearly because Alex Trebek was complaining about how long the word was to fit in the box. So when transcendentalism was introduced in our class, I felt a familiar wave of nostalgia hit me. I was pretty excited to start my essay, but I didn’t have time on the weekdays, so I decided to work on it during the weekend. It wasn’t until Sunday morning, the day before it was due, that I forgot to do it. I had that guilt in the back of my head and I sat straight up in my bed at around 4 am, pondering about the essay. I

If you think jumping off a diving board is fun, you should try cliff jumping. At the end of the summer (2015) my family and I went to Smith Lake, Alabama. We had heard about this beautiful lake from some friends of ours who had went recently and loved it. After we had heard about the lake once we kept hearing about it more and more. Nothing ever said about the lake was bad, so my mom decided to look it up. From the pictures it seemed like a super fun vacation spot so we decided to book a lake house and try it out!