To the Editor:

Year after year, it can be difficult to find something new to say about the tradition of sledding on Kirk Hill.

Last year, I recounted my late grandfather's return from World War II and his lifelong desire for the simple pleasures in life — pleasures that included watching village children sled on the small hill out his back window.

My grandmother, Doris Kirk, passed away this summer. She was the one who, for some 30-odd years, sent the annual winter sledding invitation to The Enterprise, per my grandfather's request. But I know it tickled her to look out the window of her sewing room and watch the children tromping up the hill, the zigzag of their footprints weaving through the old pear trees.

The trees are quite grown now and there isn't a clear view of the hill from my grandmother's sewing room. But, every once in a while, I see a child dragging a sled through our yard and it tickles me, too.

Years pass. Things change. Trees grow and so do the children. But one thing remains unchanged, and those are the simplest joys of life — the pleasures that are as fleeting and impermanent as a first winter's snow.

Jen O'Connor and Eric Krans
167 Maple Avenue
Altamont