Sledding
The National Weather Service made some mumble about snow the other week, and I was strangely rather looking forward to the measily inch or so it was forecasting. It rained instead. Because I’ve been jonesing for the stuff, I thought I would wax moronic about one of my favorite things to do when there’s more than a foot of snow on the ground: sledding. Well, okay, perhaps it was my favorite thing as a pre-teen, but still…
Like most poorly planned cities who do not anticipate such contingencies, my little town generally died when there were more than a couple inches of snow on the ground. School shut down, businesses became “open-optional”, and the local radio station discussed closures and other topical news, to which my family tended to tune into, in addition to the far-off less topical regional television news stations across the Sound. My dad, who drove for a living, tended not to work during these times. Especially in the latter half of my tenure there, the sand trucks sprinkled the least amount of gravel onto the road as possible in an effort to save money, which meant that more often than not in adverse weather, the only road in and out of town remained unplowed and icy. Mom didn’t have the luxury of not working, as the hospital needed their staff, especially in times where accidents were more prone to happen.
So it was my father who took my sister and I out sledding, when there was enough snow for our feet to completely disappear into the drifts. He’d generally take us to a gravel pit inside of town, as there were very few viable hills so close to home, and we’d spend a couple of hours on inner tubes and plastic, flat-bottomed sleds, smoothing out the snow on the gravel road as we zoomed separately and together down the hill.
There was one year of epic snow-age in which both my mom and dad had the day off, and all four of us went to a new location, a really steep road going up a hill not far from the haughtily titled “International Airport”, a strip of pavement named as we were not many miles away from Canada. Once in a while, a truck with four wheel drive would clamber up or down the hill, but the rest of the time, we were stomping up the hill with our chosen steed, and zooming down at break-neck speeds. We had the road to ourselves for the first hour, and then another family with young children arrived to play as well. It was more difficult to sled then, as the children needed to be constantly reminded to make way for things that could potentially run them over.
We had a grand time laughing at people who fell off, or could not steer their whatever-it-was around the curve near the bottom of the hill, where the road veered abruptly to the right. My mom was especially prone to ending up with her legs and butt up in the air, upended into the ditch on either side of the road. We sledded, sitting on our butts, or facing forward as we lay on our stomachs. The inner tube was difficult to control as one could imagine, and we’d often end up going down the hill sideways. We’d go down singly and in pairs, and there were a couple times all four of us descended on one sled. We’d generally lose one person along the way. All of this was uproariously funny.
It was one of the only times that we stayed out much longer than we normally would, as it was such perfect snow for sledding and the perfect location to do it in. My mom finally complained that her feet were too cold, and we all piled into the car, snow melting off everything we were wearing and getting the seats damp. We all wore multiple layers and our denim pants were iced and caked in the stuff. They stood by themselves as we slipped out of them on our way back into the warm house, wherein we dined on big bowls of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.
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Challenge yourself to Holidailies 2009 by writing one entry each day in December.
