Songfacts®:

• Frontman Colin Meloy moved to a rural location ten minutes north of Portland, Oregon in late 2009 with his wife, the illustrator Carson Ellis, and their young son, Henry. This beautiful, stripped down tune was inspired by the first January Meloy and his family spent in their new home, when the winter brought three feet of snow. "Portland alone shuts down when there's any snow, but up here we just don't get touched," he told UK newspaper The Guardian. "We hardly get any services up here anyway, so when the snow came we were stranded for 10 days with no garbage, no mail." He added, smiling. "It was awesome. So that song is just about shoveling snow, and thinking about all the snow I shoveled as a kid."