Descriptive Essay: Donnor Lake Near Lake Tahoe

I stare at the shiny black road racing towards me, warm air breathing heavily from plastic air ducts at my feet. I feel abnormally sensitive to my current gray surroundings; leafless trees speeding past me quietly, blurry tendrils against the white sky behind. I’m driving down a winding highway with no guardrail on the side of a cold mountain. Sparse green pine bushes sprout randomly from the snow on the slope to my right. Desolate of any other cars, it is easy for me to examine the wet asphalt giving of a reflection of the snow capped terrain in the distance. My seat warmer feels uncomfortably hot but I don’t bother reaching over and shutting it off. I am set on arriving at my destination; a cozy wooden house on Donnor Lake near Lake Tahoe.

I had to turn right past a snow suffocated coffee shop then drive south around the end loop of the lake in order to get to the house that rested on the complete opposite side of the lake than where I was. The road on my left didn’t loop around, it just continued straight and away from the lake towards Lake Tahoe. The side I was on at the moment did not have homes right on the lake with a dock. These houses rested just a few yards across the street seeming begging to inch closer and be next to the actual shoreline. I came to the intersection that gave me the choice to go straight or to continue left on the road to the other side with an eventual dead end. I turned left on the road that was getting a little farther from the water. I passed a beach with a playground that was merely just heap of uneven snow now. I remembered visiting there with my brothers long ago during the warm vibrant summers. We’d walk in bathing suits and flip flops alongside the brown pine needled covered street twenty minutes to that beach. We’d swing on the squeaking metal swing sets and swim through the cold murky lake water to the anchored raft that bobbed offshore. I smiled at the thought of us lying on that plastic raft, soaking in the sun as our skin dried. We would then try to get our dad to blow up an inflatable boat so we could get back because we didn’t want to get back in the freezing water. We

On my left side there was a small nook with a handmade shelve of dusty unused snow shoes and a wooden trunk of warm layers. I made my way down a short hallway past a door on the right side that was a restroom, to the open area with a set of stairs on the left and a cold kitchen on the right. Past the stairs on the left was a decorative bar and a cozy plush living room. I used to call it the family room but now it was simply just the living room. The fire place wall was stone and the mantle above it held pinecones, candles and a mini telescope next to a vase with dead twigs sticking out. Straight ahead past the kitchen table on the right were a set of doors, surrounded by towering glass windows that led out onto the deck. The view from that deck was truly beautiful. There were a set of rocking chairs out their that I used to love sitting in while I inhaled the fresh pine tree air. A door in the kitchen led to a hot tub then the set of stairs to the dock. The whole house had three floors; the one I was standing at the moment, downstairs with the master bedroom, guestroom and laundry room, then the upstairs floor with three bedrooms and a shared bathroom. I trudged I to the kitchen and opened the heavy silver fridge door. The bright fluorescent light illuminated the tired kitchen behind me. The clean glass shelves were bare. I sighed the thought of driving in to town to buy groceries. I shut the door