Jason will like this post.

I was trying to understand the feeling of not knowing, and then I remembered! There was that one time! I was working up in Tahoe for the summer, setting pitfall traps (for tigers, mostly). One of our sites was a miserable 45 minutes straight up from the road, no trail. We had to carry in all our gear to set up the pitfalls the first time and it sucked. Three of us had worked all morning to get our gear in, and installed one pitfall trap. We were just starting to dig the second pitfall array when someone noticed a column of smoke from a forest fire a couple ridges over. A light wind was blowing toward us. What to do?

One of my co-workers thought a fire could rapidly cross two ridges, and we should evacuate immediately. The other co-worker thought that two ridges away was far, that we should finish our trap and then head back. I had no way to evaluate those choices. Either option, that a fire two ridges away was dangerously close or no imminent threat, was completely plausible to me. Neither consequence, getting caught in a forest fire or having to haul all that gear back in plus looking dumb, was easily discounted. I was going to have to make an important decision between two very different choices with no way to get the information I needed.

Man, that’s a terrible feeling! I remember it clearly. Now I can empathize with y’all. If you are ever caught in the woods, with work left to do and a fire maybe coming your way, you can imagine me there. I’ll be shaking my head all sympathetic, and I’ll pat your hair and murmur “I know, hon. That’s rough.” Anything else, like work, marriage, kids? I’ll bake you cookies and tell you to sack up and choose. I just can’t understand.