Lots of Luck

I'd like to preface this post by saying that I am a man with alot of luck. Alot of it is good, and alot of it is bad, but there always seems to be alot of it.
Those of you who know me, likely know that I would much rather be too hot than too cold. There are a number of possible reasons for this, but my current favorite is that I've never been so hot that I couldn't find some way to cool off, but I have been cold and completely unable to warm myself. This last week I was prospecting in a section of the keyenta formation near Willow Spring. As far as I have been able to tell, there is only one ridge in the area that allows access up and down out of the outcrop, and on my third day at this locality I couldn't find it. What follows, as with the previous post, is a brief synopsis of my thoughts throughout one of the worst nights that I've spent in recent memory. Continue

7:00 Okay, that definately wasn't the right ridge to take, now I'm at the base of the cliffs. Okay, maybe I'll be able to get up one of these side canyons. I haven't explored this area, there might be a way up here.
7:20 Dead end, [insert explitive here]! Start climbing, I can see a way up, it's steep but it looks maneagable
7:35 Scrubala! This isn't a way up! [insert lots more explitives here]. I just climbed up this steep god damned slope, scraped myself up and pulled myself to the top of the ridge, and there's a cliff that I didn't even see! It's only 12 feet of smooth sandstone, but it might as well be 200, I can't climb it. Okay, find a way down and try to get back to the good ridge.
7:50 Badlands are a bad place to be running around. Go faster, you're momentum will keep you going forward and hold you to the substrate when running along curves in walls. Run! Fast! Go! God Damn! Everything's blending together. I can hardly see ridges anymore, it's just bands in this low light! Run! Think! Where the hell is it. It's a ridge with a single plateau with another ridge with 4 plateaus directly to the north of it. Go!
8:00 Sunset! God Damn it [Insert expletives in every language you know]. RUN, GO! GOD DAMN IT! Where the hell is it! I'm going to have to go to a landmark I know and find myway back the long way. Follow the ridges out to the main plateau and then go up the appropriate canyon. Remember, Keep going North whenever possible.
8:20 Okay, going over ridges crosways isn't safe anymore. Keep going, as fast as you can. I'm really pulling off some wicked stunts here. I'd never have tried that jump if this wasn't an emergency, and I've never actually run horizontally on a wall before. Go faster.
8:30. [Dark] Keep going North, always north. I can't see much anymore.
8:45 [Darker] What's this? The fence at the plateau. That means I'm there! That also means that there is a virticle drop of more than 50 feet imediately to my left. Keep right, Keep going north, up this canyon. The GPS unit is useless. I can see where I need to be, but not how to get there. During the day I'd just go over some ridges and get there in a nearly straight line. [Make up new explitives to insert here].
9:15 Can't see my feet at all. I can see my hand okay: it's the silouete against the stars, but my feet are gone and so is the ground. Keep going. Stumble. Go. [forget the expletives, there not doing any good]
9:30 [looking at an overhang cut into the rock by a meander in the stream bed] This will have to do for shelter. It's not much, but it's something.

I layed down in the curve of the rock. At first I tried to hide my face in my hands, my stomach pressed agains the rock. I fit better though if I faced outwards, towards the oncoming cold. Supper was three packets of honey. For the next 8 hours my thoughts were pretty simple. Occasionally, I reflected on how the day had begun, by my testing the myth that if you squeeze an egg evenly it won't break. It broke and I had to change out of my egg covered pants into my relatively clean shorts. I was going to be stuck out there on the day that I'd worn shorts. Besides my shoes, my only other insulation was a t-shirt, a light overshirt and my felt hat. I was dressed for keeping heat off, not in. By ten o'clock I was shivering. At several points throughout the night I stopped shivering and I wondered whether I was actually warmer or if I'd just run out of energy. I tried to sleep but the shivering kept me awake most of the night. I may have gotten an hour of shut-eye the whole night. I thought about the remark that a friend once made, that it would make good tv to have a camera crew follow me around on my travels. This would be great TV. The camera guy would be obligated by some journalistic code not to help me.
What occupied my mind most was the irony of it all. I got a new back-pack a couple of weeks ago and I completely forgot to take the emergency pack out of my old bag and but it into the new one. I own a thermally insulative foil blanket, dry chemical heat packs, candles, matches and protein bars that are old and disgusting but nutritive; all of it back at camp. I'd even taken a pair of wool gloves out of my bag that morning.
To better insulate myself, I dug myself into the sand. Twisting my body, sand was pushed out and I sank a little further. Shiver, dig, shiver, dig. I reburried myself with loose sand. There is now a perfect Will-shaped depression under a rock somewhere in the painted desert of Arizona.
Under normal conditions it would have only taken me half an hour to fourty five minutes to cover the remaining distance. Leaving at sunrise, it took me 2 hours to reach my camp. Once there, I ate heartily and went to sleep. That was a day of rest. I slept fitfully until mid afternoon and did soduku till going to bed for the night.
I hate the cold. Just for the record, it got down to about 40 F that night.