There's a Lesson Here

"Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it." - Lewis Carroll

If anyone has wondered why I'm blogging so frequently this week when I should be in the field and distantly removed from civilization and computers, it's because I'm stuck here in Flagstaff. The reason is that its snowing here and it would be stupid to try to take an Astro van off road through the snow. Furthermore, it would show equally poor judgement to go out too soon after the snow melts because the hills that I'm interested in are made up largely of bentonite. When wet, bentonite becomes as slippery as grease. It's one thing to get one's car stuck in sand (done that), another thing to get it stuck in snow (done that too), but it's something entirely worse to get it stuck in bentonite.

My situation however smacks of irony. When I came into Flagstaff to re-supply I was sun-burnt from the waist up. In spite of the mild pain, I'd been enjoying the warmth and sunshine so thuroughly that I considered it a large, red badge of honor and was glad to have it. To this end, I mocked those of you in Alberta who were forced to trudge through close to a foot of snow. Now, after over a hundred days without percipitation in Flagstaff, I have to contend with snow, people that have no idea how to drive in snow and the fact that my only entertainment comes from my favorites on the net and going through the NAU library's entire natural history section.