This throw-back goes out to my Northern friends. I know you might be a bit tired of that precious white powder that is blanketing your landscape, but I want to remind you how lucky you are.
I’m jealous. I miss snow. I miss it a lot. I don’t miss shoveling it in May, but this time of year just isn’t the same without sub-zero wind chills and a large white canvas calling my name. You really haven’t lived if you haven’t played in snow.
My siblings and I would build snow forts for our snowball fights (snowballs we’d spritz with water so they were rock hard – the only way to have a REAL snowball fight). I think one of my sisters may have been devious enough to put rocks in some of them as well. We were hardcore.
That’s right. One of our many mountainous snow hills.
Of course we’d build snowmen, too.
Is that a snowman with a pineapple on its head? Yeah, I had no part in the creation of this sad sad little man.
My cousin and I created a snow-Elmo. I was so proud.
And now you can see why my siblings weren’t the ones to go to art school.
Eventually we graduated from playful to perilous. My brother became an expert at building ramps for our sleds (we lived in Northern Indiana, people. Hills were few and far between the snow-covered corn fields.) Again, spritzed, or maybe drenched, with water so it could freeze and we could go farther faster. That’s how we roll.
There was one place we could go that was considered a hill by most stretches of the imagination… the good old Scout Cabin. Now when you’re a kid, it seemed like a mountain you had to climb and it felt like forever as you made your way to the top. In hindsight, it was probably two stories? Maybe?
One year, my brother, my younger sister and I decided to go sledding there. It was as risky as sledding could be for yester-year’s youth in my small town. My brother was the pusher. He would back up as far as he could with us, run (at what seemed like the speed of light) and let go. We would sail over the hill, screeching at the top of our lungs, wind smacking our face, snow on all sides, loving life and the freedom you felt for those twenty seconds of utter sledding bliss.
Except the time my brother pushed my little sister too hard and she went flying straight for the river. He shouted at her to roll off the sled repeatedly. I stood in awe. She kept screaming (but didn’t roll off …???). My brother sprinted down the hill. I stood, still watching in awe. She finally rolled over like a foot from the river and … it was done. My parents would have been SO mad! But it was AWESOME!!!
My brother pushing my sister. Her face basically looked just like that all the way down to the river. I guess it really can freeze that way.
Little daredevil stuff like that just isn’t the same in summer. For those of you that have it, go out and do something with it. Maybe salt on the roads and plowing out your drive isn’t your idea of fun, but you can make it fun. Be a kid again. Make an angel. Build a fort. If not for you, then so those stuck in a warm sunny climate that has no snow can live vicariously through you. Remember – it’s a no-take-backs life, baby!
