Life in the northeastern U.S. offers many benefits and one of them is snow sledding. Growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts, some of my fondest memories of winter involved sledding down our steep front yard. Our house sat atop six acres of undulating land with a driveway that was a half-mile in length.
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, my dad plowed the driveway himself with a 1947 Ford tractor that was a great source of pride. It was the tonka toy that actually worked and dad loved bouncing along on that thing. After a big snow, dad placed a sawhorse at the bottom of the driveway to prevent any cars from driving up, and gave us the green light to sled from the top of the front yard, down many bumps to the last curve of the driveway and finally to the bottom at Chandler Street. It was the best sledding anywhere. Better yet, dad used to meet us at the bottom of the driveway, attach a chain to the sled, and pull us back up with the tractor. I never knew anyone who got a tow at the end of a run.
Now I’m in Syracuse, New York where we had a horrible sledding accident in our town. It was so tragic, that the Boston Globe referenced it in an article about the increasing municipal restrictions on sledding in Massachusetts. 12-year old Taylor Denson slid head first into a parked car here and died three days later.
Since then, city hall moved to ban sledding at the popular hill and at all other hilly public land in the city. Enforcement will be nearly impossible as we get an average of 120 inches of snowfall every year in Syracuse and it’s unrealistic to think a police officer might be posted at every hill after every storm.
It’s interesting that in spite of it’s history of accidents at the water tower location where the Taylor Denson died, parents keep bringing their children to sled there. Many say they keep watch over their children to make sure they slide feet first and don’t practice risky behavior on the hill, but I think it’s something more.
In this sedentary age, some parents recognize sledding as a rare and novel way to get kids off the couch and into the fresh air. Sliding down the hill is a thrill, but that walk back up is rigorous exercise by any measure.
Sledding is available to so few children in this country. You have to live in a location with snow and with hills. Sledding is special. Yet statistics show sledding is dangerous too. Nearly 23,000 people are injured every year while sledding, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s a lot of wounds for an activity available to fewer than half the people in the country.
I would be sad to see sledding go away. It’s fun, it’s exhilarating, and when practiced with some common sense, perfectly safe. For a society that mandates helmuts for bike riding and car seats for all young children, let’s not become too afraid of the risks of sledding and prevent a good run down a steep and bumpy hill.
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