After the snow, it was all downhill

Can there be a more blissful way to begin the week than with a snow day? And can there be a more exciting way to spend it than sliding down a slippery slope on saucers, tubes, sleds, and boogie boards?

Across the region, the hills were alive with the sound of glee yesterday as kids of all sizes and ages celebrated winter's last stand, despite face-abrading winds and pelting snow.

With heedless extravagance, they spent the currency of youth - joy, exuberance, spontaneity - reminding all adults within earshot of immutable truths in the realm of both physics and philosophy. To wit: Decreasing friction and increasing gravity equal exhilarating speed; and simple pleasures are the best, and will always be so.

At Lynnewood Elementary School in Havertown, Patrick McCauley, 11, and Dan Tate, 14, massed the snow into a mogul that enabled acrobatic daredevils such as Matt Munafo, 8, to dazzle the crowd with "big air" and dramatic crash landings.

By midday, at Shortridge Memorial Park in Wynnewood, the ever-popular sledding hill was crowded enough to test the wits of an air-traffic controller. Collisions - usually good-natured ("I'm sorry, I'm sorry!") - were common, and those who dawdled at the end of their runs ("Look out below!") risked getting clipped from behind.

Sean McMorran, 13, a sixth grader at St. Margaret School in Narberth, jumped on a sled with two pals and achieved such critical mass and velocity that the pubescent trio nearly flew over the creek about 50 yards past the foot of the hill.

"Awesome!" McMorran exclaimed.

Earlier in the day, lawyer Anthony Zarella, 44, decided to stay home so that his wife, Nancy, also a lawyer, could go to work. The most urgent item on the docket: taking his two girls, Alison, 9, and Jane, 7, sledding with two girlfriends from the neighborhood, Caroline Kwapinski, 11, and her sister, Caitlin, 9, who also happen to be schoolmates at St. Denis School in Havertown.

The Zarellas live in a stone house that backs up to the venerable Merion Golf Club. The tee box of the adjacent hole sits on a rise that falls off steeply. In the summertime, the hilly terrain adds to the beauty and challenge of one of the world's most storied golf courses. In the wintertime, it's an excellent place to sled.

Technically, the golf course is off-limits - "No Trespassing, Private Property," signs admonish - but everybody in the neighborhood knows the spot where the chain-link fence sags. With an assist from a stack of rocks, a nearby tree, or a boost from a friend, scaling the fence is a cinch.

And it's a tradition at least as old as the last time Jack Nicklaus assayed the Merion links. In fact, the Zarellas live in the house where Nancy Zarella, 42, grew up, and she remembers sledding on the golf course when she was a girl.

In the morning, the girls frolicked on a dramatic decline that Alison Zarella dubbed "Rocket Run." But the wind-whipped snow, gathering force as it raced across the golf course, stung their faces like a sandblaster. Alison, her cheeks so rosy they appeared to be rouged, soon pronounced herself "freezing." Unlike her girlfriends, who had clothed their legs in leggings, sweat pants, and snow pants, Alison had underestimated the cold; she was wearing only jeans.

After a break to warm up back home, Anthony Zarella once again helped hoist the girls over the sagging fence. Riding in plastic saucers, Jane and Caitlin zipped down a hill that bottomed out in a sand trap. Alison, a high-spirited lass whose dauntless spunk suggests an appetite for testing limits, positioned herself in her red plastic sled behind Caroline, another sensation-monger and acolyte of the carpe-diem school.

With a determined shove, they launched their plastic missile, zooming down into the sand trap, which was veiled and cushioned by a thick blanket of white powder. So mighty was their momentum that they crested the lip on the far side, with a roller-coaster-like thrill in their bellies, and slid another 20 yards before stopping shy of a menacing crevasse marking the course of a creek.

No exclamatory words, just peals of laughter, which said it all.

Again, the arctic blast hastened their retreat, stirring thoughts of shelter and hot chocolate. One by one, Anthony Zarella lifted and pushed the chilly girls over the bowed chain-link fence. Alison landed on the other side with an unceremonious flop, provoking hilarity. Somehow, the fence-climbing ritual made the sledding seem more special, even magical.

"I'll remember these times someday," a smiling Anthony Zarella said wistfully.