The fog comes on
little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor
and city on
silent haunches 
and then moves on.
~Robert Frost

There is something about fog. I am a lover of this meteorological phenomenon. Perhaps it is the Celtic blood running deep within that is drawn to those mornings when there is a veil that seems to hang over the arrival of the day much like a good Scottish moor. Perhaps it is my dramatic nature that finds the romance in the shadows the mist creates. Whatever it is, I always find a foggy, visually complicated start to the day touches something deep in me.

A few weeks ago now, I drove early on a Saturday to the St. Paul Farmer’s Market, a weekly ritual if I can make it happen. At the top of the High Bridge as it crosses the Mississippi River I encountered the gift of fog moving lazily over the road in front of me, drawing me toward a horizon I could not see. The road simply seemed to float into a Brigadoon-like land I was being called toward. It was so beautiful, so mesmerizing! Driving along the river road the familiar houses and buildings appeared and then disappeared as the wind moved the misty presence this way and that, taking new forms as it shifted. I pulled over to get a better view of…things I couldn’t really see but knew were there. There was a magic in it all on what good have been a regular, ordinary Saturday morning.

Every time I experience fog I think of how it is both a real weather-related, scientifically understandable fact of nature and yet is also metaphor. A metaphor that is a kind of teaching tool for all humans. How many times has the fog of a life experience cautioned us to slow down, be present to what is right in front of us? How many times have we walked in a kind of fog not knowing what lies at the end of the road, beyond that bend? These foggy times can be brought on by any number of things…anxiety, grief, self-centeredness, distraction, to name a few. It is then that the shadows move in to urge us to slow down, listen, breathe deeply, trust in the good possibility of the next step. It is then that we can squint into the shadows to bring something forth that had perhaps not even been imagined, something just outside our reach.

As Robert Frost’s classic poem teaches, fog always moves on. Always. It is short-lived. It can come just as quietly as little cat feet and then travel on, often, with a similar kind of silence. The foggy life times, hopefully, also move with the same gentleness, lifting to bring a fuller picture of the road, the path, the next. 

In the meantime, the shifting shadows can provide a magical backdrop to not only the present but what lies just beyond. Beyond this moment. Beyond this day. Something our eyes can only see once the fog lifts and moves on to that mysterious place from whence it came. 

Until the next time. Until the next time.