I grew up in South Florida but we made yearly trips up to Montreal every winter to visit with family. And part of those trips were always weekend getaways to our family cottage up in the Laurentians.

I loved everything about going Up North. It was so fun stuffing ourselves in our puffy snowsuits into the car and taking the winding roads through the snow-covered mountains to get there. We’d stop off in quaint St. Saveur, which is like a storybook town when you’re little, with old-fashioned lampposts and tiny white lights melting into carved-out ski trails, infinite Christmas trees, and then mountaintops. We would stock up at Page’s bakery, which smelled like heaven, and fill bags with warm crusty bread and homemade donuts drenched in sugary glaze.

Once we got to the house in Morin Heights, my dad and uncle would dig the sleds out of the storage space. Then they would shovel the snow so that it created a safe and cushioned toboggan run (the house was built on a hill, which met up with the frozen lake – you could create a track that ran down the hill and then you could “jump” off the “shore” and land on the lake, so my dad and uncle were always really thorough about covering the shoreline rocks and making sure it was as safe as a vertical jump like that could be!)

My brother and I would spend hours flying down the hill – you’d get that six-seconds of pure bliss before landing with a THUD, then we’d catch our breath and trek back up the hill, our snowsuits “swooshing” with each step, us dragging our sleds up by their frayed ropes. We’d toboggan into the night until the hill was lit up with a spotlight and the lake became an infinite span of silent darkness. I remember how the sled and our “Weeees” would be the only sound for the ride, and once you plopped down on the frozen lake, everything would become so quiet. I’d just sit and listen to the stillness until I got the hebeejeebees and would run back up the hill. We’d sled until our toes were frozen, our cheeks were flushed, and we were sweating under our snowsuits. We’d finally go inside, peel off our layers, and cozy up in front of the wood-burning stove to let our toes warm up.

We’d sleep in the upstairs loft room, one giant room with sloping ceilings and a big window with snow-covered trees outside. In the morning we’d wake up to the sound of my uncle starting breakfast in the kitchen right below us, the smell of coffee and bacon and maple wafting up the stairs. We’d eat in the sunroom at a little corner table overlooking our toboggan run, my brother and I stuffing our faces as quickly as possible so we could suit up and go sledding. At night the grown-ups would play board games and cards at the same table while my brother and I watched movies and dozed on the couch in the adjoining living room, fire crackling and popping in the wood-burning stove.

When we got older my aunt and uncle renovated the cottage’s bathroom and added a jacuzzi tub, an even dreamier way of defrosting after a day of playing in the snow. One winter we spent an afternoon on a horse-drawn sleigh in the woods, and other times we’d meet up with my dad’s cousin, who also had a country house in the Laurentians as well as toys- a few snowmobiles and ATVs, and we’d go on lightning-speed treks through the narrow carved paths of the mountains, gliding across frozen lakes, trees zipping by in a snow-covered blur. At Christmastime, my aunt and uncle would cut down a tree themselves and put it up in the living room, usually a more spindly, Charlie Brown-like version of tree, and they were the most perfect Christmas trees I ever saw. I remember sitting at the table threading pink popcorn onto a string, which my uncle helped me place along a line of trees, and he told me all the birds and chipmunks would eat them. And they did. I thought that was so cool- all we had in Florida were lizards!

Summers Up North were incredible too, with canoe rides on the lake and endless basking on the dock. Someone was always fishing or swimming. We’d take inner tubes and floating rafts over to Teddy Bear Island, a small cluster of rocks with a single tree just a few hundred yards from the shoreline. When we had grown-ups with us, we’d get even more adventurous and paddle over to a bigger island located further away.

The times I spent going Up North were some of the best memories of my youth. It was the perfect place to be a kid- the endless fun, the freedom, the adventures, the opportunities to experience something completely different from muggy beachy Florida, being so carefree – what I wouldn’t do to go back there, to that place, where we were all together, for just one more weekend.

It’s sad it had to end – so much has changed since then. My uncle has since passed away, my aunt lives across the country, my cousins have their own families now and we seem to see each other less and less. But everything has its time, I suppose, and I guess if we still went up there, every single winter, the novelty would have eventually worn off and I wouldn’t treasure the memories I have as much.

And I know that, with each phase of my life, there have been warm, wonderful moments, and there’s more to come… I just like relishing in the really great ones.