Making things happen

... with integrity

Monday January 5, 2004 Volume VI Number 1

here we live, we don’t see much of it.  Occasionally, the mountaintop off in the distance will be dusted white and we all go out back to take a look.  I’ll pull out the binoculars just to see the stuff up close.  Once, it even stuck in our back yard for a couple of hours.  That was a day to remember.

As I write, I’ve seen more snow in a week than I’ve seen in years.  It’s a reminder of what many experience every season for weeks, even months at a time.  There’s a romance in falling snow - an exhilarating, mysterious beauty about it.  It’s also a dangerous, terrifying beauty. 

The first surprise came along when we drove through Las Vegas, and there it was – the world’s desert get-away - under a blanket of white.  It’s rare, I understand, for places like The Mirage, Caesar’s Palace, Circus Circus, and The Sahara to be covered with snow.  Just off the freeway, I snapped a picture of a palm tree looking like it had been flocked for Christmas.  (Flocking has always been a Southern California tradition my mid-western relatives find amusing.  It’s so, well, artificial.)  But we were headed for the Rockies, and somehow this prelude of a Las Vegas looking like White Christmas seemed an ominous sign – if the desert is covered in snow, what is waiting for us at ten thousand feet elevation in Colorado?

This year, like every other year, I found an evening to go through the movie classic Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney made about the time I was born.  There are a couple of scenes I fast forward… but the movie always puts me in the mood.  And when the grand finale begins in the barn of the old Vermont Lodge with a stage set for Christmas and the General’s in his uniform and all the guys showed up to offer their appreciation by singing another rousing chorus of “We’ll follow the old man wherever he wants to go…” and someone taps Wallace on the shoulder to inform him that the much anticipated snowfall finally arrived, and they open up the barn doors to a horse drawn sleigh decked with bows and bells coming around the bend and the four of them in bright Santa Claus red trimmed with snow white fur and caps and the orchestra swells and the Binger leads out, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know,” and Rosemary Clooney smiles and answers Bing with a smooth soprano perfectly matched to his rich baritone and the General chokes with emotion and young ballerina tip-toes into a pirouette and the snowflakes drift down outside as a chorus of dancers and musicians celebrate the best of an American Christmas Eve. 

And it gets me every time.

So there’s a romance in snowfall.  A crackling fire.  A cozy cabin.  A special someone.  Let it snow.

Stacy prayed for snow.  On her wedding day.  And she got it.

So all of us, committed to our extended family, made our way to Estes Park and a Salvation Army Conference Center just at the timberline in the Rocky Mountains to celebrate a promise and the beginning of yet another in a new generation launching a marriage and a home with hopes of someday – a family.

The two of them love the high country.  They’ve chosen to spend at least the first few years of their married life in Estes.  So why not get married there?  On the second day of the new year?  And while you’re at it, Lord, could we make it a cozy chapel with a blanket of white just outside the frosty framed windowpanes and could you bring my whole family there to revel in the beauty of your astonishing and marvelous creation and all be together?  Could You?  Would You?

Yes.

He did.

* * * * * * * *

It’s one thing to fire up the home theater and sing along with Wallace and Davis and the girls on the dining car, “Snow… snow… snow… snow… SNOW…” clickety clack over the surround sound and bright colors on the wide screen DVD retouched film in the comfort of your overstuffed chair, stocking feet up on the ottoman, and quite another to be there when the real snow falls.

We ventured outside that first morning to snow-flakes drifting down lazily in the quiet of the tall pines, piling up on the branches and rooftops, sweeping across the skating pond and outlining the heavy wood frame over the stone bridge and the water wheel powering the mill grinder and ice forming like a sculpture on the dam holding back the reservoir and the green fir branches bend heavy under the load of thick white powder.  The shiver comes not just from the cold; it’s the shiver of exhilaration prompted by the scene.  It’s a wonder we don’t often see.  “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” said Robert Frost, “… but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep; and miles to go before I sleep.”

That same sort of shiver in a similar place gave inspiration to those immortal lines.

We wore our formal clothes into that little chapel.  Most all of us carried in our shoes and at the entrance pulled off our wet, snowy boots, replacing them with shiny polished dress shoes to match the moment.  You dress up when someone you love gets married.  My brother-in-law has stood by as two sons made their promise, but this is his first and only run as father-of-the-bride.  They will tell you that there is a difference between marrying off a son and marrying off a daughter.  They are right.  Greg and I are close… we’ve been fellow sojourners long enough to pass through many of life’s milestones, and this one – this giving away a daughter in marriage - is perhaps one of the most unsettling of them all.  He couldn’t help himself.  He put the song “Butterfly Kisses” in his Power Point review of his little girl’s growing up years.  Turns out, this analytical, successful computer engineering manager type is as sappy as me.  And there she was, as stunning as a bride can be, beaming bright, and mainly pre-occupied with the young man in tux and tails under the wreath of green - and the candles flickering and outside the snowflakes drifting down outside the warm chapel all of this creating an unmistakable, and unforgettable rocky mountain high.

* * * * * * *

But such beauty, such exhilaration, such fitting ambiance – comes at a price.  We are accustomed to going from here to there without much concern about road conditions.  If we have a long travel day, we’ll determine the estimated road time by a simple formula – divide the number of miles by anticipated average speed.  Going five hundred miles?  At an average speed of fifty miles per hour (that’s conservative enough to allow for rest and fuel stops and a meal or two) and you’ll figure about ten hours on the road.  Adjust for change in time zones.  It’s all pretty well straight forward.

But above nine thousand feet in the Rockies, with steep grades, tight turns and cabins set well back and away from the highway, heavy snow can throw a simple, reliable formula into a tailspin of irrelevance. 

As the nation watches a mid-winter tempest on television dropping record levels of snow over a large mass of territory, the entire assembly of family and friends packed up their vehicles and departed the Salvation Army Quarters into the snow-pack and drifts and ice-glazed roads, down into the valleys filled with dense condensation – fog – and up over the mountain passes where the salt and sand are tossed off the backs of big trucks in hopes that tires will remain in firm contact with the surface of the asphalt.  Traction – a beautiful thing.

By the magic of cell-phone technology, we kept in touch, keeping up the cheer, warning each other of road conditions and closures and yes, avalanches. 

We live with congestion, most of us know high density housing, office cubicles, eight-lane freeways, high rise parking structures.  We stand patiently in long lines, tickets in hand, waiting without complaint to get what we want.  We quickly forget.  There are still wide-open spaces out there.  Haunting.  Majestic.  Broad.  Uninhabited.  Mysterious.  Wild.  Untamed.  Unspoiled.  Perilous.

There was lively laughter on those cell phones as we sometimes crawled, sometimes slid, sometimes flew down those back two lane mountain roads and then Interstate Highways.   Over the airwaves, we compared notes - the near misses, the installation of chains. The slipping and sliding.  The vehicles in the ditch as we passed.  White knuckle driving.  A new intensity in our prayers for journeying mercies.  A new level of belief in guardian angels.

And now that it's over, it looks as though we survived. 

And in that survival, we bring with us a whole new sense of who we are, what we have and what we cherish.

Stacy and Jared wanted us to share in their love for the high country.  They wanted us to taste the adventure.  They wanted us to return to our homes with stories to tell.  They wanted theirs to be a wedding to remember.  Out of the ordinary. 

It was all of those things.

* * * * * * *

It’s Monday morning.  You are a leader.

It’s a new year: 2004.  Last year brought many surprises.  Some of them you’ll always remember.  Some of them, you’d like to forget. 

Jared and Stacy asked me to play the role of Master of Ceremonies for their Rocky Mountain wedding reception.  It’s risky business to hand me a microphone.  I scanned the audience and took in the scene – all the people I love and care about the most were there, scrubbed and dressed with the look of anticipation in their eyes as they took in the love these two people had for each other and for them.  Over there in our daughter’s arms, a little boy cuddling close, nearly a year old now, happy to be in his mother’s arms, not yet understanding the significance of this cast of characters he’ll come to know by name all assembled in this room high in up there the mountain’s magnificent isolation.  Our grandson.  He represents a new generation just now populating a brand new millennium.

I told them all that there are many reasons to be fearful of the future.  Lots of doomsday scenarios floating around out there.  No shortage of cynics predicting an end to the way of life we have known and loved.  But when I look at these two young people and their peers now establishing homes and bringing children into the world, affirming values and embracing a belief and bringing determination and courage to the task that transcends time and eternity – I’ve got hope.

And so do you.

Go ‘head.  Load up the car.  Don’t let the forecast on WEATHER.COM keep you home.  Don’t fear the cold and the ice and don’t allow the prediction of a storm keep you from the woods – lovely, dark and deep – and cause you to miss the snowflakes gently falling in the quiet of a brisk morning, and hear first hand the declaration of a promise that will last.

Go there.

And bring the stories home.

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