You read all these wonderful stories about children going sledding. They whiz down the hill on their bright red Radio Flyer sleds, tumbling into drifts at the bottom of a long, gentle, beautiful hill. The sun is glaring on a million snow crystals and their eyes are bright with merriment. They trudge up the hill to do it all over again, laughing and shouting to each other.

My childhood sledding experience was a different matter, usually.

Before we begin, it must be understood where I grew up. Home was the flat farmland of the middle part of Kansas. Wheat waved over the level ground in the summer, and only rows of Osage Orange trees kept us from being able to see for miles and miles in every direction.

There wasn’t a hill in sight.

We had a saucer sled—bright green—that we pulled out every now and then. It snowed, sometimes quite a substantial amount, and like all children, my siblings and I wanted to go sledding. But where?

We tried every place on the yard that dropped in elevation at all. On one side of our old farmhouse, there was a small drop, part of the landscaping. For an exhilarating half of a second, you were rushing down toward the driveway below, the cold wind rushing past your freezing ears. Then you hit bottom. It didn’t take long to outgrow that one.

One day when the neighbor girl was over, playing in the snow with us, we realized that the drop down to the creek provided a wonderfully steep and long hill. The creek was frozen over pretty hard on that particular day. At least in some spots. Besides, we planned to stop the sled before it reached that point. We piled on and started down.

It was wonderfully stimulating.

We didn’t get it stopped.

I can’t remember if the ice held us or not, but for some reason, we only tried it once or twice.

The best days were when Dad and my uncle Jay got out the four-wheeler and pulled us in wide, swinging circles over the barren fields. That was living. The whole world was frost and ice and biting wind rushing by. Until the sled tipped.

Once, with a devilish gleam in his eye, Uncle Jay pulled my sister over a snow-covered dirt pile. Both sled and girl went flying. She claims her back has never been the same since.

I suppose the only real sledding happened on the vacations when we spent Christmas at Grandpa’s place in Colorado. There was always snow. It was superb. We’d load up (after an hour or so of general discussion and organizing) and head for the back side of Wolf Creek. Somewhere up on that pass, we’d pull off to the side of the road and find a big hill. We’re talking really big. Brutally big.

Some of us came from the land of no hills, some from the land of no snow. We were very young and slightly old and everywhere in between. That hill was a monster, and only a few of us were really prepared for its violence.

People skidded out clear onto the road. Sometimes, almost to the guardrail on the other side. Thank goodness there wasn’t much traffic on the road those snowy days. I remember a line of uncles standing halfway down, ready to catch a wayward sled before it rammed into the scrub brush on one side and injured its occupants.

There were mounds of snow to throw you off, and when you fell, it was deep. There were other people not to be hit, sleds that turned at the slightest shift of a rider’s weight, and tubes that might go flat at any second. Six-year-old me didn’t do so well, climbing back up that endless slope of white.

It was divine.

I grew up not sledding much. Now, at last, I live in the land of hills. My students talk about sledding. They don’t know the meaning of three-foot landscaper hills or four-wheeler pulling in flat fields. This is the real thing.

If only it would snow.

Savanna Unruh