Rewriting our childhood

Following Hannah Hinchman's advice, I have begun to re-remember my childhood, recording my memories of the fields, streams, woods, and prairie land that surrounded my childhood home in rural southern Wisconsin. In between my nature memories from my Midwestern childhood, I am adding descriptions and reflections from my walks through the woods, fields, and marshes of the suburban New England town that is now my home.

I invite you to share your memories of nature from your childhood or your responses to nature as an adult in the comments.

Katy Z. Allen
January 21, 2012

Note: Unless otherwise credited, photos were taken by me.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Skiing, Sledding, and Tobagganing

In winter, we went skiing, sledding, and tobogganing down the hills that rose up from the sides of the valleys. My skis were old wooden ones that had been my mother's when she was young. I wore my regular snow boots and put my feet into large loops, big enough to encircle my boots, and then clamped myself in. Easy as pie.


We had a hill that we called our ski slope. It began at the end of the path across the marsh. ("Path Across the Marsh," January 22) A long stretch of the lower hillside was meadow, open and potentially ski-able or sled-able, but only in this one area was the hillside free of trees all the way to the top, providing a nice long run, when the snow conditions permitted. Our ski slope was groomed only by our skis as they made tracks in the snow. Going down the second time in the same tracks - if one could manage that - provided a faster run than the first time. But too much snow made skiing - and sledding and tobogganing - impossible, for in the deep snow we could go only a very short distance, or no distance at all, before sinking down and coming to an abrupt halt. 


Some years we had a "January thaw," a respite from the frigid below-freezing and often below-zero weather that was the norm of my Wisconsin childhood. The snow softened as it began to melt. Then the temperatures inevitably dropped and the top of the snow froze hard, leaving a crust. Depending on the thickness and strength of the crust, we could either walk on it or else, with each step we might be held up for a brief second and then sink down into the snow, making walking very difficult. On those rare occasions when the crust was thick enough to carry the skis or toboggan, we gloriously zoomed down our small hills at high speed.


One winter the conditions were just right for a wild, wild, toboggan ride straight down the steep hill below the barn, conditions that included the craziness to even try this run. The hill was steep enough that we picked up more and more speed, so when the front of the toboggan hit the first wall of snow from the snowplow along one side of the driveway we bounced into the air and over it, to almost immediately hit the wall of snow on the other side of the driveway. But that wasn't the end of our jumps, for the driveway had a circle, so, after a short zip across the middle of the circle, we had two more tortuous jumps as we hit the two walls of snow on both sides of the driveway on the other side of the circle, and then -- danger! Quick! Bail out before we hit the barbed wire fence! It was glorious and crazy and fun and scary all at once, and whoever was on the back of the toboggan was lucky (or unlucky?) if he or she made it to the bottom of the hill without sliding off.


Another winter - or maybe it was the same one - my brother Tom created a sled run through the woods across the valley; a toboggan was way too awkward to navigate this trail. We flopped belly down, head first, on our wooden sleds with their metal runners, and steered carefully, very carefully. One sled at a time in case the other person crashed, zigzagging between the oak trees. At one particular spot we would be zooming down the hill and suddenly we were headed straight for a huge tree, but with adroit and swift steering we swerved to the right, then back again to the left after the tree to continue downward at top speed and into the safety of the open pasture below. This winter ride was also at once glorious and crazy and fun and scary. And my brothers and I are here to tell the story.


There come to us moments in life when about some things we need no proof from without. A little voice within us tells us, 'You are on the right track, move neither to your left nor right, but keep to the straight and narrow way.


There are moments in your life when you must act, even though you cannot carry your best friends with you. The 'still small voice' within you must always be the final arbiter when there is a conflict of duty.


Having made a ceaseless effort to attain self-purification, I have developed some little capacity to hear correctly and clearly the 'still small voice within'.


I shall lose my usefulness the moment I stifle the still small voice within. 
--Mahatma Gandhi

Be strong and of good courage...                              --Deuteronomy 31:23


1 comment:

  1. Again, a wonderful description of something I might have sampled once at the farm. (my favorite winter thing was ice skating on Lake Mendota, early '70's) Wisconsin winters are not what they used to be.

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