Childhood Sledding

I remember when I was little, we used to sled at a hill in Cherry Valley near a pump station. Whenever winter came, everyone used to gather there and create quite the line. Ramps were made of packed snow and we looked out for one another. Sadly, as time progressed the river kept rising. It seemed like each year we would sled, the river slowly came closer to making the hill too dangerous to sled. Just before I moved when I was 12, the township finally called it quits. Too many close calls with the ice on township property. They placed a sign over a fence that was built then, no one would be able to enjoy that hill again without the possibility of having the police called. Several times the river rose as much as 20 feet, making for unprecedented erosion and danger to the people around it. I'll never forgot how excited the kids in the neighborhood got after a single snow storm. Unity with that childlike innocence in having fun, that I'm not sure I'll even find again.