Kerry's Hill

By: Stephen Tully

Steve sat parked at the end of Francis Avenue staring out over the landfill and down the hill to the woods beyond. The place had changed markedly since his last visit. Mother Nature and her perpetual cycles of growth, death and regeneration had gradually redressed the hillside biota over the past forty years. Steve found these natural alterations comforting as they somehow underscored the cosmic pas de deux between young and old, past and present, continuity and change. They made him feel welcome – like he shared something with the place. He found the more profound man-made changes less welcoming. Countless truckloads of dirt, busted up concrete and construction refuse had been dumped over Kerry’s Hill. He wondered how long this had been taking place and who had permitted it. Kerry, the old lady who once lived in the house at the end of the street overlooking the hill, would never have allowed it. She loved that hill. She chased the neighborhood kids off the hill whenever she caught them trespassing. She was at once its owner, its guardian and its groundskeeper. Perhaps the city, or the county, had purchased the property upon Kerry’s death. Who knew?  Whoever the new owner happened to be obviously did not share Kerry’s reverence for the be-slanted patch of real estate. They had turned it into a dump.

Still, amid all these stark transformations, Steve recognized a few familiar old trees. One of them had posed a real threat to his life and limb. As explained earlier, Kerry’s Hill had once been a steep, grass covered, nearly treeless hill for the uppermost one hundred yards, or top section. Kerry kept this part mowed and manicured. A dense tree line delineated the top from the bottom section which descended another one hundred yards through thick woods stretching all the way down to the valley floor. On winter days when there had been an adequate accumulation of snow Kerry’s Hill became a favorite place for kids in the neighborhood to go sled riding. It featured a precipitous drop, making for a thrill-packed ride. There was no real sled trail to follow so the first few runs in the fresh snow established a slideway, set according to the dictates of gravity and contour. After a few more runs the snow became packed, creating a shallow indent in the snowsheet and producing the barest suggestion of sidewalls that might hold one safely on course. Staying on course was an existential imperative. If your sled wandered off course to the left, it was no big deal. The left side was totally void of trees or obstacles that might pose harm. Drifting off course to the right was an altogether more dangerous proposition. Standing solitary and ominous, just to the right of dead center on the hill, about seventy feet up from the tree line, stood a sturdy and menacing oak tree. The sled trail passed a few feet to its left. Downhillers would pass precariously close while traveling at their maximum rate of speed. The rule was that if you started veering right, you bailed out early and lived to make another run. As a testament to their adolescent sense of indestructability and daredevil ambitions, the kids would often gather snow from the surrounding area, pile it into a mound, and make a ramp about two-thirds of the way down the hill – right next to the tree. Even the bravest Winter Olympian would have taken one look at this set-up and said, “Sorry, no way.” If the kids’ parents had witnessed these death-defying exploits they would have formed a committee, chopped down the tree, and sought counseling for their obviously troubled children. Steve recalled the trepidation he felt at the top of the hill preparing to make a run over the ill-conceived ramp. He smiled as he replayed the sequence of events, the moment of commitment, mounting the sled and taking aim, setting off down the hill, gaining speed rapidly as the icy wind caused his eyes to water, leaning to one side or the other to adjust his line toward the center of the ramp, the sudden weightlessness of being airborne, the jarring blow from crashing back to earth that nearly knocked him off his sled, then dragging his feet until he came to a gradual stop. The bottom third of the grassy hill was the all-important deceleration zone. It was just as steep as the upper section, so in order to “put on the brakes” before they went hurtling into the tree line, sledders would drag their feet, or, if necessary, roll off their sleds to make use of the natural friction created by spreading themselves out over a larger surface area. When the ride was over, they stood up, dusted themselves off, grabbed their sleds and headed back up the steep pitch. The climb back up was arduous and slippery. Steve remembers having to descend part-way down the slope in order to help his little sister Jane make it back up. First he would watch her struggle a while. She’d walk a little bit, slip down, crawl a little bit on all fours in her fur lined parka, slip backwards, then sit back and rest. Finally he would say, “Jane, do you need help?” She would pull back her hood with her mittened hand, look up at him with a helpless, pleading expression on her face and say, “Yes.” So he’d sit down in the snow and slide down to her. Then he’d stand up, tell her to hold on to the back of his coat, lean forward and slowly tow her back up. When they reached the top he’d add the admonishment, “If you can’t make it back up then don’t go down.”