Into the Mist

There was a fog today, the first of the season. And by this, I do not mean that we had some fog. I mean there was a fog. The difference is subtle when written, but significant when experienced. We occasionally have heavy, incredibly dense, visually impairing fogs in the CA central valley during the winter. Last winter we didn't have any, but usually we get four or five a season. They occur when the air temperature drops quickly while the ground temperature does not. The cool air is dry, so it leaches moisture out of the ground. But once the moisture makes contact with the coolness, it condenses instantly to be come an opaque vapor that hovers impenetrably above the surface. Sometimes even the sun and wind cannot disspell it.

I quite enjoy a good fog. Not the brown, industrial kind that Dickens describes in A Christmas Carol, but the swirling white kind that envelopes the world in a special feeling. Fog provokes an odd sort of reversal; solid objects take on an insubstantial, barely-seen quality while the ephemeral air mutates into something solid and tangible. It turns the landscape into a water-color painting, muting the colors and blurring them together into something softer, less intense, less real. It also muffles sounds so that even the roar of a car's engine and hum of it's tires become distant, almost imagined. Essentially, fog acts like a veil over the world, fashioning mystery out of everyday things. In literary terms, fog is poetry.

And how fitting that it should come on Halloween day, don't you think?