My mother and father decided to move to Minnesota when I was sixteen, and after living in Wyoming most of my life I thought it would be cool to some other places in the U.S. My parents ended up purchasing a house on the outskirts of a small town called Finlayson.
I was very much the adventurous type, and after living in an area with few trees in Wyoming, it was nice to have acres and acres of trees to explore. I would just go for hours and hours exploring and looking at different wildlife, it was great.
One foggy morning, before the rest of the family had got up, I heard my mother calling to all of us kids (there were six of us)she was saying "kids we finally get to see one those Minnesota black bears". All of us kids ran to the living room window, and I started cracking up laughing. The fog had made it hard to distinguish what things were, and what my mom thought was a bear turned out to be the next door neighbors dog. We all had a good laugh about that.
To say Minnesota was beautiful would be an understatement, I loved going to Duluth, because just before you got to the city of Duluth we had to go up this hill, and when we got to the top there was Lake Superior. Seeing that for the first time, with ships docked and in transit, reminded me of the ocean, The site was breath-taking.
I will always cherish those times, I loved being there it made me feel alive and also gave me many memories even today. I remember one day I took the trash out to the burning (it was my job to burn the trash)it was kind of a windy day, and the burning barrel was next to a swamp that we had next to our property. I lit the garbage, and soon it was burning quite well.All of a sudden a gust of wind took some of the burning garbage and deposited it on the tall swamp grass. I tried to put the fire out, but I was unable to. I
I took off running to the house for help, I yelled for my parents "THE SWAMP IS ON FIRE" out ran my parents, and two of my sisters. My dad ran for the hose, my sister ran to turn on the hose, my mom was frantic, she yelled "call the ambulance" instead of call the fire department. My dad was aiming the hose at the fire yelling "WHERES'S THE WATER" my sister had the water on, but my dad had accidently grabbed a partial hose from the yard that wasn't connected to the faucet. By this time, the fire had almost burned itself out, and we used shovels to put out the rest.
We still talk about the swamp fire to this day, and we all get a good laugh out of it. We moved back to Wyoming shortly after my 19th birthday, but I will always remember the beauty of the area, and the adventures I had there.