I went outside to fetch in firewood Saturday afternoon and ended up trying to recapture my childhood.

As I walked out, big flakes were falling like wet feathers; it was stacking up so quickly that I was almost sure it was going to be a big snow.

But it left just as quickly, leaving behind only a few inches of abandoned flakes on the ground — just enough for a sleigh ride. Or a skid down the driveway on an improved trash can lid, if you would prefer.

I can remember riding sleds as a youngster. In fact, it is one of my best and most favorite memories.

We would ride almost anything down a steep hill if given the opportunity. We tried an old car hood, trash bags, trash can lids and a piece of tin roofing. There were also a few of those wooden sleds around with the metal runners, but I didn’t have one. It wasn’t until I got a little older that I was given my first real sled, maybe because my father noticed his only male offspring trying to kill himself on a piece of rusted barn roof. He bought me a nice sled a few weeks later and even took time out of his life to help me pick it out at Vass Kapp Hardware on Saturday morning.

We’ve all heard the horror stories of the day, like the one about the kid who got his finger cut off by a sled runner. It didn’t sound true in my youthful ears until one of the boys in my class ran face-first through a barbed wire fence, shredding his nose and cheeks and leaving him scarred for life. It also left some of the kids — feel free to insert the word ‘parents’ here — sledophobic. I tried to keep it from them, but my parents eventually found out and gave me that, “Be careful on that sled or you could shred your face off” speech. It was like the “cut off your finger on a sled runner” speech, only more urgent. This speech also came resplendent with actual name references and first-hand references, instead of “there once was a boy.”

I always wondered why he just didn’t roll off and let the sled go on without him and save us all the agony — him of the actual accident and recovery and us of hearing about it for years to come. Every time I asked to ride a sled somewhere, the question invariably came up, “Do they have fences where you’ll be riding? Be careful around fences, you could shred your face off.”

I never asked the boy when he finally returned to school in bandages, but I always imagined that he probably saw the fence coming and froze up, his hands in a death grip on the controls, until he hit it full speed still looking forward. I’d rather not see it coming, if I had the choice. If I had hit a fence, I’d say I’d have seen it coming, since that’s all I heard about for the next five years or so of riding sleds. Even through the warnings, I still did my share of the stupid and dangerous, like ‘accidentally’ jumping over the top of a cellar and landing on the neighbor’s car. It officially happened because the snow was too deep and I couldn’t see the cellar’s flat roof and I was blinded by the sun gleaming off the wet snow. At least that was the story I told my parents.

The truth of the matter was, I decided it would impress the little boys and girls in the neighborhood if I could jump a car. It was about a four foot drop from the cellar roof to the car and I chickened out at the last moment, letting the sled go without me and sliding off the roof backwards to land, with a hearty thump, in the snow.

Luckily, my mother had helped me dress that day, so I was in no danger from falls under two stories or so.

She always made sure I wore two pairs of socks, one inside my fleece pants or long underwear and one over my pants, a T-shirt, a regular shirt, a sweater or sweatshirt, gloves, a wool toboggan or face mask, a coat with a hood and my warm boots. Feel pain? Ha! I was lucky to walk. While I was laying on the ground next to the neighbor’s car, looking up as the snowflakes cascaded down from the heavens, I scarcely wondered why I wasn’t breathing. It took a few moments for my air to return, but I’m still not sure if I was more injured by landing or by being subjected to abject laughter from the neighborhood kids. I took some solace in the fact that none of them were brave enough to even try it, before or after I did.

The sled landed softly on the car and skidded over the top, leaving twin track marks on its way down the hill to the road. As I looked at those tracks, my adolescent mind had but one thought, ‘I bet I would have made it.’ If I had, it could have been my ticket into the sledding hall of fame.

The neighbor’s wife gave me a stern lecture about respecting other people’s property as she cleared away the snow checking to see if I damaged their car. Likely it was protected by the same snow that helped save my derriere, but she didn’t seem to care.

More recently, I finally decided to try and ride a sled, or sort of a sled, again on Saturday. I was outside carrying in firewood when I noticed a little round shield-shaped plastic thing with two handles — a far cry from my high-tech sled of yore. Even so, the thrill beckoned as a light-bulb idea flashed into my mind.

Looking around carefully to make sure none of the neighbors were outside, I walked all the way up to the road and climbed aboard, noticing how much more steep the hill looked now that I was sitting down.

Since the little plastic thing had no steering mechanism, I figured I could lean to one side to turn the slight curve in my driveway. With that logic, my ride was in trouble to start with.

I sat down Indian-style on the saucer-shaped sled, which gave me a terrible center of gravity, and gave myself a good push off just for fun. I realized I was going too fast and too far to the side when I nearly clipped the apple tree and started heading for the big mound of dirt at the end of my yard that leads off about a 15 foot drop-off into a briar patch. Leaning only made it impossible to see where I was going and trying to straighten up left me somehow facing backwards.

That’s when I decided to bail, rolling to one side and tumbling through the yard. Snow sprayed all over me, found its way into my hood, down my shirt and even into my pants. I laughed about it as I got up to go fetch the sled out of the briar patch, but not until I had done a quick body inventory to make sure I hadn’t broken anything important. I was freezing cold almost instantly, a fact that made me wish my mother had dressed me before I went out to play.

“Aren’t you a little old to be doing that?” Came the call from the house, with a good degree of amusement obvious from the tone.

“Probably, but that never stopped me before,” I said as I attempted to sweep some of the snow off my jacket, sweeping more inside that out.

Just because I could, I walked back up the hill and did it again, this time hitting the tree with one leg and spinning around like a helicopter before losing my sled and coming to rest in the snow on my back, watching the flakes fall just like so many years before. I finally got up and walked inside to warm up by the wood stove. By later that afternoon, I was sore in several places, something I don’t recall from childhood.

While I at first didn’t want the neighbors to see me, I later decided it didn’t matter any more than the kids teasing me about attempting to jump the car.

It all goes back to the same point: I hope I’m never too ‘grown up,’ worried about what others think or concerned about my health to have those little moments of fun in life. Being spontaneous and taking a chances are what make living worth the effort.

By the way, the forecast is calling for snow today, so grab your sled and go find a nice hill. But stay away from fences and the neighbor’s car and don’t get your fingers cut off.

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