Moses Brown Hill 250 Lloyd Ave.Providence
Last January, when I went to Moses Brown School with a group of friends for some post-blizzard sledding, I saw a 10-year-old kid go down the gentler of the field's two slopes on a plastic sled. Halfway through the run his sled flipped, and his body tumbled end over end until it came to a stop, his legs twisted over his spine.
I was pretty sure he was dead until he leapt up, blood dripping from his face, and screamed, "That was awesome!"
I'm with him. Sledding at Moses Brown is sweet.
There are two slopes at the Moses Brown field - one has a longer, gentler ride, while the other is a far steeper, death-defying run. It's really a matter of personal preference - you get a longer ride on the gentle slope and you can pick up some speed, but the steep hill is really big. Armed with stolen trays and cardboard boxes - the sleds of the amoral and thrifty - we went at first for the steeper hill.
Someone had constructed a large ramp of snow near the bottom of the hill so that, with the most exacting precision, you could hit it and go flying to your death. I highly recommend going for the ramp. I never made it onto it, but that was because I lacked the necessary coordination more than anything else.
But I don't want to undersell the gentler slope; if you've had enough of the terror of flying down the steeper hill and wiping out at the bottom, it can be nice to take a longer ride down the other hill and fly across the frozen field.
And after you've had enough, you can grab a Meeting Street cookie and some hot chocolate - corrected with peppermint schnapps - and snuggle by the radiator. If you're looking for a nice winter day of sledding in Providence, you can't beat Moses Brown. That is, unless you have the balls to sled down College Street from the Van Wickle Gates, through traffic on South Main Street and into the river. That would be awesome.
