Fire and Ice

After 3 weeks stuck in Flagstaff, Az due to weather, I'm finally heading back out into the field. I was very fortunate that I left the desert when I did, otherwise I would have been stuck with a 5 mile hike to the nearest town (not that far unless you're hiking through snow on uneven terrain) for supplies. During the last three weeks, I've remained optomistic that the weather would change and that the snow would melt. For three weeks, it didn't. In fact, it just kept snowing. This is definately not how I pictured Arizona in March.
After being confined here as long as I have, I started to consider my options. I could go west back to California and stay at my parents' place until the snow here melted or I could continue east until I was out of the snow. The latter option would take me as far as Texas. The Texas panhandle however has been on fire. Close to one million acres have been burned by wild fires, resulting in the deaths of over 11 thousand horses and cattle, as well as two people. Given my luck, I would have gone out to a site and been just out of range of either cell phone or radio reception when wild fire would sweep through the area. Besides, ash is worse for finding fossils than snow. It drifts, but it doesn't melt. Further east then, into the main body of Texas? No. Just as I was deciding how far east to go, the weather changed dramatically and the snow melted. Three inches of snow fell on tuesday. Today it's nearly all gone. Some might see the hand of providence in all this; quietly suggesting when I should leave an area, or when I should stay. No, it's just nature tending toward maximum irony.