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I remember three- and four-week-long snow days, and drifts so deep a small child, namely me, could get lost in them. No such winter exists in the record, but that's how Ohio winters seemed to me when I was little - silent, silver, endless, and dreamy.

I know my family and I would always go up to the mountains just for fun. We always skied. Then, all of a sudden, my brother started snow boarding. Older brother thing, I had to do what he was doing. So I started snow boarding.

I remember one winter, when I was about five or six, I spent three days with another boy, tracking a bobcat that had been sighted in another county fifty miles away, but which I was sure had come into our neighborhood.

When I was 12, my mum put us in a summer camp meant for children from low-income families. It was in upstate New York where we had to live in tents, fetch water, cook our meals, and even dig our own toilet bowls.

Me and my brother lived in kind of a shed behind our house, and it was cold. We really lived kind of a dirty existence. It was tough to move away from my father and grandfather in California. I wore socks that were so dirty they were hard and black, and I would go into the lost and found box at school and look for clothes.

My parents are both teachers, so we had the summers off.

I remember wishing there was snow in L.A. And how jealous we used to get of those Christmas specials with kids playing in the snow.

I had forgotten how thrilling a snow day is until my son started school, and as much as he loves it, he swoons at the idea of a free day arriving unexpectedly, laid out like a gift.

Midwest kids got to summer camp. There is something very special about being away from your parents for the first time, sleeping under the stars, hiking and canoeing.