Not megalomania but enthusiasm drove me to push the limits in that golden age of snow fort construction. Higher?—of course. More elaborate?—always. Multi-level with a superlong slide?—oh yes! . . . but . . . this required . . . more . . . building material. I’d already scooped up the entire backyard, so operations had to expand. My sisters’ and I’s plastic pan-shaped sleds served as perfect collection vehicles. The front yard was expected, but the charge across the street into the wide-open schoolfield changed everything. Perhaps it was a first taste of the impossible, the first exhaustion——my ‘Fitzcarraldo’. Sledload upon snow-piled sledload returned across that sleepy suburban street. Hours and days passed and I won't say it was unadvantageous to be the oldest sibling. Still, the burden of this earthwork was mine, and more often it was the momentum of the circumstances that commanded me.