One thing that my loved ones know about me is that I am an ardent fan of the weather. I had no idea that I was weather-addicted until a dear friend had the grace and gentle tact to turn on me one day when I was inquiring after the weather in her end of the country, with a “You know you sound like an old lady with all of your weather talk, don’t you?”
Well, gosh, I’m Canadian! Weather is what we DO!
After a period of trying to censor my weather-based discourse, I gave up and now lean into the urge to attentively keep up on the latest conditions for our neighbourhood, the city at large, this province, and our side of the country. Then I make sure that I’m familiar with the broad strokes of the weather details for the rest of Canada. It’s sort of my responsibility to keep an eye on things. No thanks necessary.
Although I’m fascinated by and crazy about all kinds of weather, I’m particularly wowed by snow, hail, rain, fog, and frost. And don’t get me started on thunderstorms! Come to think of it, of all of the weather we are handed throughout the year, I have the least interest in a sunny day. Is that weird?
I can hammer on about any of my favourite weather events, but fog is like a magic show to me. The properties of how fog is formed have been explained to me several times over the years, and I’m surprised and impressed each time I get schooled, sagely nodding my head as if taking in the details. You know me well enough to know that I’m taking in next to nothing.
However, from what I’ve gleaned, there’s moist air and then….and then there’s this bank of colder air and it……and then when this one bank of air.….and then the other one sort of pushes the whole thing….and as long as there’s a certain level of moisture in there…..TA DA, you get fog!
So, that’s why I still see fog as a complete mystery, but I suspect that my brain subconsciously chooses to keep it that way. It is a gift to be able to consider that something happens by magic, in a society that has an answer for pretty much everything.
It is presently Fog Season out here on the West Coast. They claim that we have 62 days of fog throughout the year, although that sounds to me like someone’s fudging the findings a tad. By contrast, St. John’s in Newfoundland gets an average 124 days of fog per year and THAT I fully believe.
Fog is a multi-sense experience.
It has a certain smell to me—the smell of ‘wet’ but with a very different note than rain carries.
All sounds coming from outside of one’s somewhat limited field of vision, get muffled or cut off completely when a fog settles. Having the expected sounds of city life muted by a cloud, makes being in fog feel like a very private moment.
And then there is what a nice thick blanket of fog will do to someone with hair like mine. I WEAR fog when I’m out roaming around in it. My individual hairs curl up in sheer happiness and droplets seem to cling to my head in the way that baby monkeys cling to their mothers. I assure you that the overall effect ends up being nowhere near as cute as monkey babies.
Other than that sad image, I find fog visually arresting. When I find myself in the middle of it, I notice more about the environment around me. By restricting the distance that I am able to see, and by lowering a dense ‘backdrop’, my powers of observation zone in. I am able to focus on the striking pose of a tree that I have often walked by, never before noticing its uniqueness. A park bench can look remote and isolated, or cozy and intimate. Something as simple as an old car parked at the curb looks romantic when the distraction of the background is obscured by a curtain of fog. Even the direction of an average road can carry the impression of intrigue or drama. Try to imagine that final scene in Casablanca without fog.
As I’m sure you can tell, fog completely engages the photographer in me. I get as excited about fog as I do when there’s been a hoar frost, or if I wake up to a fresh blanket of snow. I can’t help myself and I rarely try. I reach for my camera and head out to photograph whatever I can until the fog eventually steps aside for the sun or some rain. I’ve long been fan of black and white photography and fog somehow turns the world around me into that sort of duotone tableau. FINALLY, everyone sees life the way I do! A burst of colour—say, a flag on a pole, a brightly painted birdhouse, or a colourful jacket on a fellow pedestrian—adds its own brushstroke of magic to the scene.
We Canadians are lucky to be given a front row seat to the many moods that Mother Nature reveals. Maybe fangirling about the weather IS a trait that is associated most often with ‘old people’ but I’m happy to be a player in that band. I find it inspiring to be able to embrace something over which humans have absolutely no control. Our only job is to spectate, with no expectation of participating.
Bring on this season’s show!
That was a beautiful and poetic description of the whole fog experience!!! Now I want to make sure we get out there next time it’s foggy!!!!