Let It Snow

I've been in a bit of a funk for a little while now. Holiday blues? No - this season brings me great joy. Post-partum hormonal fluctuations? Probably some. Sleep interruptions? Undoubtedly. One contributing factor has been snow. No, we haven't had any, that's true. I think tonight we are supposed to get blown out to the ocean with the newest storm. But no snow here. It's the stories I've been hearing coming out of the snow that make me melancholy.

I have resisted writing about the Kim family trauma as those of us on the West Coast have been saturated by the minute-by-minute accounts. For those of you in a far-off land, like Uganda or Texas, here's the story... A cute little family from San Fransisco went missing en route from Thanksgiving in Seattle back home via the Oregon coast. For nine days while stuck in the snow on an old washed-out logging road, mom kept her four-year-old and seven-month-old going by nursing them, even as she got weaker. After doing what they could to stay alive, including burning the car's tires, dad finally went out searching for help. The girls were rescued and for days we all hoped he would be, too. They have figured that he hiked for sixteen miles in the snow before finally dying of hypothermia. He was a true man, a hero to be sure, doing what he could to protect and save his wife and children. This story struck a painful spot in the collective hearts of our region.

Currently there is another snow adventure gone terribly wrong; one whose details resemble a picture that could belong to our own family, even as the Kim's story "could have been us". Even now searchers are desperately aching for a clearing in the weather to seek three climbers who have been lost on Mt. Hood for over a week. What a hard Christmas this will be for their families.

I don't have a great spiritual application to make of this. There's no neat little bow to tie together at the end. I know that there are risks in life - choosing to embrace those risks are what makes this a great adventure. I know life is short, which is why we need to live it to the fullest each day ("being ready" as I read in Mark today). I know and believe whole-heartedly that this life is not where it's at or what it's all about; we're just visiting until we can get home to heaven. I'm just a little sad as I read the paper these days, and I wanted to tell you about it.