Walking inside the Clouds

I love fog. Fog is magical. Fog wipes away the 'what is' and opens the door to the 'what might be'. You can be anywhere, in a fog. A plain old field by light of day becomes another country or planet in a fog. You could be Underhill, trudging across the frozen tundras, or weightless on the moon, in a fog. Creatures that might shy away from humans come out and cavort in a fog. Fairies love a fog, ask any will-o-the-wisp! Familiar things take on new dimensions, the outlines blur and the colors dim. Its easy to believe that a tree might uproot itself and go for a stroll, in a fog. Sound, too, becomes magical in a fog. Voices carry across the field, so those far away sound near, and those near sound distant. Water babbles better in the fog. You can almost make out the words. I think that is the water nymphs teasing me. So here is the fog; where the world is something other than it was, where faeries romp and dryads walk their trees; where water nymphs sing and laugh and splash about. Here is fog; where you can be transported to any place that you can imagine, and several you never thought of. Here is fog; where imagination, and magic, and possibility are one.

I love fog. I had the pleasure of driving around in it all night. I know most drivers dislike the fog, it does make things iffy, but I love it. Ugly places look pretty in fog. Pretty places look ethereal, but ugly ones suddenly become lovely. The photograph at the top of the post is a small street that runs between two shopping centers. Shopping centers are not pretty. If you stand where I stood, without fog, all you see are squat little buildings. With fog, its a landing strip on another planet. Fog is best in the dark, second best just as day begins to break. Once the sun is up, the fog quickly dissipates. If it sticks around, it backs off, like a shy child. Or, as it did this morning, it wanders off to visit with the cows.

 Even if you don't go off on fantastic journeys to otherworldly places, fog is fabulous. The idea of being inside of a cloud is just wonderful. When I see clouds in the sky, I always wonder if there are beings walking around inside of it. If I were light enough to walk inside a sky cloud, I imagine it would be sort of springy and firm. It would cradle me in safety, yet let me climb and descend as I chose.  I imagine the tops as being very fluffy so my feet could sink in, and the bottoms as being sort of thick and firm, like the skin on a pudding, keeping me from falling through the cloud.  I love to find a light source and look at the millions of droplets that form the cloud/fog.  When you see a cloud in the sky, it is hard to believe that it is not solid. It looks firm and fluffy, like whipped cream. But when it sits on the ground and you stand inside it, it isn't solid. You can clearly see the spaces between the droplets. Being inside a cloud makes quantum physics make sense. Nothing is solid, its just that we are bigger than the spaces between, and so we don't fall through.

I love fog.