I don't know why a good snowfall like we had this weekend feels so good to my Southern snow-starved soul, but it does. Every time the South gets a good snow, it takes me right back to childhood, to my favorite winter sin: tempting sudden death by sled.

I grew up in the winding hills above the Roebuck Springs neighborhood near Birmingham, halfway down a long screamer of a hill on the north flank of Ruffner Mountain. In a city full of scary hills, people came from all over to court a highspeed snowy death on our road.

Our perfect sledding hill started at the top with the deceptively named Glendale Drive, impossibly steep, winding, and narrow that straightened out into a long, smooth, steep hill, the dreaded, sled-eating 10th Avenue South, ending in The Turn, a 45-degree left bend that could only be survived by the most skilled sledders, or the stupidest.

Guess which one I was.

It was legendary, not a hill for kiddies, mama's boys, or easy bleeders. I eventually mastered it, but not before it taught me many valuable lessons, the scars of which I still bear.

What did I learn? Well, screaming down that hill, going way too fast on the edge of control, taught me far more about physics than I should have known at that tender age. Newton's laws of motion came alive as I demonstrated that objects in motion, like boys on sleds, tend to stay in motion until they hit something of equal or greater mass, like the chunky teenager who was too slow to dodge me.

I also learned that, just because that stump made your sled stop violently, your body will still fly head-first for quite some way, long enough for you to realize "this is going to hurt."

If the snow lasted long enough, we'd wander to other neighborhoods, knowing that there were even steeper hills, though shorter, that brave fools like me and my buddies sought out. After one great adventure on the aptly named "Thrill Hill," I remember trudging home saying, "If I don't stop bleeding by the time we get home, my mama's gonna kill me."

I also learned I could impress older kids, mainly by being a bigger fool than they were. I remember how quiet it got when my sled (and my body) was flying through the air, launched on purpose off a driveway ramp. For those airborne seconds, it was so quiet I could hear the big kids saying, "Uh-oh," and "Call his mama."

The rest is a little fuzzy, but then a concussion or three will do that. What I do remember, I miss.

I guess what I miss the most is that pure, fool adrenaline of youth, a rush not yet dimmed by wisdom. Life never seems as sweet as when it's in jeopardy, and that's the truth of it. I hope I never grow out of the need to make my own heart pound.

Now where are my motorcycle keys?