I'm blessed, I have a TON of good memories from winter as a kid.
We would go up onto my uncle's property outside of town (about 110 acres) and get our own Christmas tree, those were great times.
One of my other uncles had horses, so we would get sleigh rides, on an old hay wagon he put runners on. Nothing sounds like a horse all decked out in jingle bells trotting along pulling a sleigh in a nice fresh road of snow, on a cold arctic day. We also did the night rides with a big bonfire at the end of the night, mulled wine....... yum
Sledding, man we did this a LOT, there was a golf course close to our house that had a HUGE hill, at the bottom was a large pond, the froze over and they had one end cleared for skating, the other for run off from the sledding hill. This hill was HUGE, took like five minutes to clamber up and a full 30 or 40 seconds of sheer terror to SCREAM down it
I also loved snowshoeing in the winter, we had our own snowshoes and we would walk around all day, way out in the bush, I just love the silence that envelopes a forest when it is snowing, and I've learned more than enough to be prepared and to know what to take with, even on a simple hike.
We did a LOT of snowmobiling too, a LOT.
We had a number of machines, some not so new, but they worked just fine.
One time we got into a total white out condition, could not see the guy in front of you, it was snowing and blowing so bad, we stopped, and took stock, the three of us decided NOT to try to make it home that afternoon, it was a good 2 hour ride when you could see your way, but now, no way, so we knew where there was an old deserted hunter's cabin a few miles away, we got there (took a LONG time) and we camped out. We were warm, had a good fire, we also had dry soup, Lipton chicken noodle soup, comes in a foil pack, just add melted snow and the same kind of foil pack hot chocolate packs. We also had some candy bars an axe each, and what we called a "Swede Saw" like this.......
We also had rope, basic first aide kits, signal flares, rope and signal flares. That night it really snowed up there in the mountains, something like 36" in 12 hours, unreal. Before we went to sleep, we put a chunk of wood under each machine's track, to keep it from freezing in place, and we tied a rope from one machine to the next and then a tree near the old hunters shack we were in, the next morning, we could barely find the darn snowmobiles!
Up above my hometown, Kelowna BC, we get what is called Champagne Powder, it is so light and so fluffy, you cannot pack a snow ball, and it is........... interesting....... to drive a snowmobile in......
Fun when you get it going, but when you wipe out, man you spend time digging out
Loved them cold crisp mornings, or the sound of a clear night of trees cracking in the extreme cold, sounds like a gunshot
Great memories for sure