Exhilaration

Exhilaration

     Today, I went sledding. There is nothing quite like it, this act of careening down carefully selected slopes wrapped in soft, glittering whiteness with wild speed and a definitive note of uncontrollability and unpredictability. Well, I suppose you could say snowmobiling is like it, and it's something people of my age (after all, I was allegedly born in 1910, according to my gravestone the internet gave me) seem to find more proper in which to participate. I can't say I've ever tried it, but I know it wouldn't be the same. Not to say I wouldn't want to try it; I think snowmobiling could be really fun to try some time. But I still like sledding. I think snowmobiling would be more like riding a four-wheeler, something I have indeed done and enjoyed. It's just a different activity, and I sat out to write about sledding, and so if I can endeavor to stay on topic, I shall. 

     I sat out today from my Grandma's house, fully bundled in scarf, coat, snowpants, gloves, snow boots, the entire ensemble of cold-warding-off-ness, my basic blue sled grasped in thickly gloved hand, being as I never attached a string to it for pulling and steering as most people typically do (I just never got around to it, and now it's too late. We'll get to why later), and so I made my way to the top of the main sledding hill in my grandma's yard, pressing on through the powdery top-layer of snow, trying not to sink through the semi-icy harder layer of older, undrifted snow a couple inches down, which had partially thawed and then refrozen, making it harder, and often not succeeding and finding myself sinking in even farther than I anticipated. Such is walking in the snow of various snowfalls at various times in various densities--over the winter build-up, quite a few layers develope, and it makes walking interesting. The best scenario is when the hard-frozen snow layer isn't under much powdery or other top layer snow, but under just enough to keep it from being too slippery, and ideally the hard-frozen snow is thick enough to prevent you from sinking through it to the depths of the other snow layers. 

     This is rare, and though it did occur sometimes today, most often, it seemed, I found myself plunging through all available layers of snow and so attempting to look for paths where the snow was at its shallowest. One of the nice things about a sled is that it does not sink through snow layers nearly as easily as feet do, as weight is more spread out and less focused on just the one point; if this weren't so, sledding would be nearly impossible in any sort of deep snow. Nonetheless, the first run down any hill is always the slowest, because it smooths the path. Most of the soft, light powder on top gets cleared out of the sled's path by its helm, and the rest gets packed down as you pass over it. Often, depending upon the steepness of the hill, on the first run, you end up having to push beside the sled with your hands at the side, rather like a surfer pushes themselves out on their surfboard, only you--or I, at least--don't do it on your/my belly, but rather on your/my knees. Depending upon the sled, I almost always go on my knees. After the first run, the real sledding begins, at least, usually. Sometimes, if the snow has a very deep powder/top layer or has no hard layer at all or one not thick enough or is too deep in general, it may take several runs to get it packed down and smoothed enough to make a good path, and I have encountered conditions where the snow is just too soft and too deep to sled with any speed at all, but this was not the case this afternoon, and after the first run, I was off.

     My grandma's main sled hill--or at least the slope of it on which I sled--is pretty much perpendicular to her driveway, and consists of a few sections, if you want to get technical, and being as I don't have the pictures I intended to take to go with this blog post yet, I feel I need to get technical to properly describe the experience of sledding it. The first 'section' as it were, is a relatively long (for a sled hill section) but not very steep slope, along which one moves at a nice glide, not hurtling along but bit by bit gaining speed, until you enter 'section two', distinguished by a little bump followed by a very noticeable increase in the grade of the slope, at which point you begin to rapidly speed up, the fastest section of the hill, leading into the jump section. This point in the hill, or slightly before it, is where I sometimes stand up on my knees and 'surf' for a short while. Sometimes I attempt to maintain this stance into the jump section, and sometimes I don't. The jump section is created by the plowing of my grandma's driveway, which creates ridges of plowed-up snow on both sides of the drive, which creates jumps. The sled hill doesn't stop at the driveway, really; at that point, you've got too much speed to really stop anyways. But the jumps are where it really gets exciting, one split second of airlessness after another as you cross onto the driveway and then off of it. They also seem to be the part where most crashes occur, but aren't the jumps always? If you hit the jump at just the wrong angle, you are catapulted off the sled sideways, or frontways, or if you get at a really weird angle, maybe even backways. Sometimes a crash stops you from making it to the second jump, but sometimes the first jump just turns you enough that you hit the second one really oddly and roll of your sled on the last bit of hill or get thrown off sideways or one knee is thrown off the side and drags or... really, all manner of things can (and have) happened on the last bit of hill after the second jump, which is a relatively short slope ending in the fence separating the yard from the horse pasture. If no crash naturally occurs, as the fence approaches, you must roll yourself off the sled to properly stop. Or at least, that's how I do it. I just lean over as I get close to the fence and I grab the sled as I do so it doesn't slide away and ideally, I land smoothly on my side or back. 

     I was intending on going on to tell you all about sledding out in the pasture, which is where things get even more exciting, and also of how my blue sled broke today, and of the significance of sledding in life, and I was going to make some comparisons with the Dauntless faction from the Divergent series, and I was going to summarize various injuries one can (and I have) sustained from sledding, and also mention how great of exercise sledding is and how hot you get after it and reflect on the beautiful sunset and all manner of other things, not necessarily in that order, but I think I shall do a follow up blog post tomorrow, hopefully with pictures, and cover as much of that as I can, because tonight I'm running short of time and I still need to finish up my third blog post of the week, which I do have started in another tab but which nonetheless I still need to finish in half an hour now, and my goodness this is a long sentence but it's technically not a run-on because as far as I am aware this is still properly punctuated and a sentence is not a run-on until there is an error in punctuation, and until then it is simply a lengthy sentence which leaves one panting at the end. <catches breath>. The Lande beyond the violet mist shimmers with opalescent, feathery, frigidized water coating the ground and shining 'neath the sun's potent golden rays, and  today the whiteness's pristine serenity is speckled and streaked with trails and tracks marking where adventure has passed.