The return of the weather report

This week, it seems, shows Wyoming's weather turning the precipitous corner toward spring. All this truly seems to mean is that there is no snow actually in the forecast, and there's been some balmy weather. None of this is insurance, none of this a guarantee. My students, and some of my coworkers, delight in reminding me of a year, not so far off, when it snowed on the fourth of July. I can see Independence Rock glazed white and slick on Independence Day, and I have to think back to all of those many travelers who stopped at Independence Rock on their long way west and thought of reaching it as a safety point. Make it there by early July and exit the Rockies before snowy doom. One small solace in a world of uncertainty and equipment failure. What would it have meant to those travelers that day, even a handful's scatter of wet, dense flakes, when they had to think so very hard about the continuance of summer? My own soul sinks looking toward a weekend of rain and a temperate fifty degrees; I can't quite think of what snow means anymore, not until we're well into the leaf-crunching days of October.