Whiter Snow

(from Eric)

It was a very pleasant November, with just a hint of snow, and we were starting to wonder whether winter in the Alps meant clear valleys and snow-capped mountains surrounding us.

No.

It has been snowing all week, and then yesterday we heard that "the snow is coming".  Which I guess means the 6 inches up until then didn't count.  And lo and behold, it didn't.  It dumped about 10 more inches in the last 24 hours, and a crazy weather report predicted up to 1 meter (seriously?!) over the weekend.

They don't really plow the sidewalks here, and you can see below how socked in the cars are.  So, I'm kind of wishing we weren't on our last roll of toilet paper.  But my goodness, it is beautiful.  It's been the steady wet snow that sticks to everything with almost no wind, so every last little tree branch is white.  The parking lot in the picture has been the site of many snowball fights and the making of many a bonhomme de neige (snow man).  You wouldn't guess it by how white it still is.

In honor of the Christmas-y scenery and the fact that this may be the last white winter for our families for quite some time, I thought I'd post this song.  A winter song for Christmas time that's not really about Christmas (just like "Let it Snow", "Frosty" and others).  I wrote this song almost 13 years ago, amazingly.  When I met Rachel, she heard it and decided to marry me, so it will always be a favorite of mine.

Whiter Snow

(free album download here)

The dusting of this frail world begins upon these trees

It stumbles down again

And blankets all the soil that hides

beneath its coat of freeze

So I slip under its covers, I hide under his wings

Opening my eyes to find a plane of newer things

Things that I had brushed aside or powdered into grains

My fragile hands have broken

All of the times I thought that I had come to dance

Above the weaker strains

So I fall into a pile, and I hide under his wings

As brokenness cries out to brokenness, as I begin to sing

Whiter snow, come and go, down underneath my feet

Let your purer grace show all of your win in my defeat

Whiter call, come and fall and fill in all of my tracks

For your end, it still remains

To spring out of the pouring rain, and

Make us new again

Lately it seems you've been finding me lost under

all this blizzard of the swirling deep

Soon it will melt as it soaks me on through

and then covers me again in its sleep

But what you have done is much thicker

It's much higher and wider than words

Covering not that which you could make new and now,

We are unfrozen, you're making us new

And so we run with you in the night

We are lifting our voicing to sing

Just for this moment to be here with you

Held in so tightly under your wings

For more snow pictures from this past week, click here.