Three Months of Bad Sledding

Try taking your sled down that "hill"!

It snowed today, and the first snowfall always makes me think of sledding. It has been said that summertime in Michigan is just three months of bad sledding, but let me tell you about the good sledding.

My sister and I started out on the "bunny hill" behind the house. We stayed outside playing nicely together (mostly, anyway) until we could no longer feel our fingers and toes. As we got older, Mom let us walk down the road a little bit to some higher hills. Maybe she got tired of us going up into the woods to get just a little higher up the hill, or perhaps it was the repeated "thumps" on the back of the house when we couldn't get stopped in time. Or maybe the final straw was when our friend went over the side of the very large pit that my dad was digging into the hillside for a root cellar. Yeah, that probably did it!

If you click on these, you can view
them full-screen.

The very best hill for sledding that I remember from childhood, though, was
across the road from our Christian day school. It was steep and smooth and had plenty of room at the bottom to squeeze every last inch of momentum out of the run. The tracks got icy with thawing and refreezing, and we built in bumps and jumps ~ we could fly! (Of course, then we had to trudge our way all the way back up to the top.)

At this point, you might be thinking, "But isn't Montana nothing but mountains? That must make for great sledding." Ah, not so, my friends, not so. The western half of the state is indeed mountainous (way too steep and rocky for safe sledding), but the eastern half is largely flat. We are considered high desert, and yes, we have cacti and rattlesnakes. The flat areas are cut through by deep coolies with steep, rocky sides, often with small creeks in the bottom. The wind doesn't help either, as it tends to clear bare patches.

No St Bernard on duty. Sled at your own risk!
 

Perhaps I have not put enough effort into finding just the right hill, or maybe some childhood memories are best left right there ~ in childhood. I think I will go make a cup of hot chocolate.

This one has no trees, rocks, drop-offs.... or slope.

 



The hill in the foreground has the right slope, but the drop-off is a killer.