Summer dust and an icy culvert.

Check out Nat's great pose on the day we showed our cousins the Etch-A-Sketch...

When we were kids, we stumbled across Etch-A-Sketch Gully, the tree-covered ditch where we found a broken toy from another decade. Dusty tennis shoes, flecked with manure and stained green by grass clippings, didn't protect my weak, rolling ankles when I climbed up and down the dirt slopes made rough by cow hooves. If you ignored the scratches from bushes or branches, the only real danger was crossing back and forth on the fallen tree over the small creek running through the ditch.

Usually the three of us took trips down there together, and we always hoped to find a new corner of the mysterious gully, or perhaps another abandoned toy, I suppose. It was in this gully that we found the best (and most dangerous) sledding hill that we first tested in the driest part of autumn by sliding on our butts down the dusty slope. Sorry, Mama...those pants were a little more brown than we planned.

Looking back, this really appears to be a death trap. Yikes.

When we traveled down there with our cousins, we eventually made it to the end of the gully, down the slope from the road, where the culvert ran below it. If our mother didn't think we were that dirty the day we tested the sledding hill, she certainly was not pleased the afternoon we discovered that we could slide down the culvert if we climbed up and went down on our feet...but I was too afraid to balance on those worn out tennis shoes and plopped down on my rear, soaking my baggy purple shorts.

If I had turned around, you could see the big muddy water spots on my backside.

None of this adventure and drama could compare to the winter visits to the gully, though. One Christmas we decided to carry our sleds out to the big hill. Dozens of near-misses were had by all as we skidded down the slope on the old green sled, sweeping past the trees and stopping when we hit the opposite creek bed. Our shouts bounced around the ditch as we stumbled back up the slope.

But the most teeth-rattling moments were still ahead in this journey. The culvert awaited us at the end of the trek, covered in a thick layer of frozen ditch water. We didn't even try to climb up to the top and walked across the road to the other end of the tunnel, just to be safe (as if any of this could be called that). Our cousin Nina made the first attempt, seated on the sled, and her excited shout didn't have much time to echo against the metal ridges as she shot down the slanted part of the tunnel, straightening for what seemed like half a second as the culvert flattened out, and thudded onto the frozen creek. After she slid several yards down the ice, we decided that perhaps we should veto the use of the sled in the future. Everyone else took their turn sitting on their butts and bumped their way down giggling gleefully and perhaps a bit anxiously as well.

At least six inches of ice, bumpy and sharp in some places.

I had just hit the drop in the ice when the flash went off.

As we approach April and the spring rains have nearly pushed the winter frost away, I am thinking of the gully a little more often. Nine or ten years ago, I would be venturing down the cow path to the entrance of Etch-A-Sketch with my siblings right after school was done for the day. I'm not looking to injure myself by mimicking my younger self these days, that's for certain. But the sense of adventure always outweighed any anxiety I had about the possible dangers back then. The gully served as a refuge to escape my teenage insecurities and a place to reorganize my creativity into memorable moments.

Year 25 just kicked off 12 days ago for me. It's crazy to think of 15 year-old Justine scrambling around a rut-covered ditch with her gangly pale legs and race car baseball hat with the fraying brim. Has anyone seen nostalgia? I think I last saw her climbing a muddy culvert and I'd like to have a chat about these feelings.