The fog of fog

foggy barn

The black walnut tree keeps dropping its ordnance on the roof. When will the fog burn off?

I’m not talking about financial fog, the fog of war, the fog of charm, or the fog of epidemics. I’m not talking about Fat, Oil and Grease, Friend of Girl, or Fear Of Google. I’m not talking about Utility Fog, in which microscopic robots link arms to form apparently solid furniture that can shape-shift on command, much less electronic fog, a mysterious phenomenon allegedly responsible for the Bermuda Triangle.

It’s a little confusing, isn’t it, all these fogs! I’m not talking about Alzheimer’s, the mental condition attending chemotherapy or chronic pain, or impediments to reading comprehension. I could be talking about a Photoshop effect, but I’m not, and for once I’m not alluding to existential ignorance, either.

I mean actual, honest-to-Whomever fog: clouds that form on the ground instead of in the sky.

Of course, when you live on a mountain, your fog might well be someone else’s cloud, especially in the winter and early spring. But this time of year, you can rise above the clouds simply by walking uphill. Or you can stay inside and wonder vaguely, between bouts of election-season-induced fury, who the hell keeps knocking on the roof.

16 Replies to “The fog of fog”

  1. Sometimes I think it would be nice to be enclosed by a fog – particularly a warm, comforting one. The credit cruch news is a)boring, b)scaremongering, c) incomprehensible. How you lot over in the US can cope with that AND your forthcoming election I can’t imagine. I think I shall go down a hole until Spring.

  2. Having just returned from San Francisco, awakening to fog horns, driving in and out of fog and through the fog picture-perfectly positioned mid-Golden Gate Bridge as I drove up to Marin, I enjoyed this post. I also remember walking in a couple of wonderful fogs on the beach at the NH Seacoast. And photographing in a fog a few years back. Real fog, the kind on the ground, is a blast.

  3. Ah Dave. Lovely picture. So much here to consume. So much pictorial beauty to cover, so much peripheral linkage to learn from,(Just went through the chemo fog experience with a dear cousin) and now I sit here wishing for some fog of forgetfulness.

    Hey! At least, though, in your neck of the woods you are just being carpet bombed by walnuts and not by little young campaign people. They are so sweet and scared. Sort of like Diogenes ..wandering the fog of our red neighborhood looking for a Blue voter, and battle scarred from having hit explosive Red ones by mistake

  4. I love a good fog and living near the shore of Lake Superior, I get a lot of them. Unfortunately, we lost our deep booming foghorn a couple years ago, replaced by a pennywhistle annoyance.

    A paragraph from my blog last Saturday:

    It was in the thirties early this morning when I headed out for groceries and the Lake had been busy making weather overnight. A thick dark cloud of fog hung low over the Lake and downtown, completely left behind when the bus made it a few blocks uphill into bright sunshine. If I were into technostuff I’d show you a photo, but I rely on my memory and you’ll have to use your imagination. In an hour or so when I returned from over the hill, the fog had burned off revealing a ship at anchor which had no doubt been there unseen the entire time. Spooky.

  5. Have I really neglected to respond to any of these comments? How rude of me. Well, thanks to everyone for stopping by, and welcome to the newcomers!

    dale – :)

    Ernesto – I guess that’s part of the reason I made a link post out of it – a poem would’ve been too easy and obvious.

    pat – Yes, hibernation always seems like an attractive prospect to me, too. The trouble is, the American election season never really ends – there’s no escape.

    Pica – Hey, glad someone noticed! Thanks.

    leslee – Hey, that’s right. Maybe SanFran is my town – I do like fog. (That’s disturbing news about your address. I don’t know how to account for that. I hope i haven’t been hacked again.)

    greentangle – Thanks for reminding me about foghorns, which I’ve heard once or twice in my life. Wonderful sound! And thanks for sharing that description. Sounds beautiful.

  6. The Blue Ridge girl in me loves a good walk in the clouds…

    Those green-hulled walnuts were more like detonations in the house I remember under walnut trees. (Mine were walnuts pounding on a tin roof. Perhaps yours are gentler.)

    At any rate, that’s a powerful knockng. Answer?

  7. “Nobody Home!” Or, “Yes, I’m registered!”

    It’s an asphalt shingle roof, so they are thuds more than detonations. (In the video I posted last night, you can hear walnuts hitting the road 8 seconds in.)

  8. On 10.10.08 at 10:16 pm Dave said:
    Have I really neglected to respond to any of these comments?

    Joan said. “No, Just mine. Too political I guess, I knew I shouldn’t have wandered off target there but sometimes that just happens in the fog of too little sleep. I seem to be seeing everything through that prism. The cloud of ants, for instance. I figured.. well of course a metaphor for the housing crisis and greedy lenders. Maybe I’m seeing locusts instead of ants?

  9. Oh, sorry, Joan. Actually, I did sort of respond, obliquely, in my response to Marly. But in truth I would be tickled if any campaign volunteers would wander all the way up here. (Though it would be very tempting to try and scare them with a crazed hillbilly act.)

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