I love the fog. I think it is one of the most beautiful and most fascinating types of weather phenomena. I love walking in it and seeing how it dresses up and changes the world around me, how it makes the most familiar of landscapes seem strange and foreign. I love it best when the fog is thick enough that you can’t see more than 10 or 15 feet away but not so thick that you can’t find your way.

The past couple of mornings have found me pushing my way through the mist toward the barn to feed the horses. I love the way the beam of my flashlight is so clearly delineated in the fog, the way you can see the edges of that cone of light, almost like the beam is cutting a fine swath through the damp and the moisture hanging in the air.

It’s fun to watch the horses prance about in the fog once you let them out of their stalls and out into the paddock. The normally jittery and nervous one went straight to his hay and started eating, while the normally calm, collected one flitted about trying to get his bearings and check for danger. Apparently, the fog makes our horses behave counter to their usual personalities.

The fog cloaks an element of mystery, I think. Maybe that is why I love it so. It makes everything seem slightly surreal, a bit romantic, and somewhat exotic. It gives you the feeling that anything can happen, that creatures of legend and myth are waiting just beyond visual range to be discovered – dragons breathing plumes of sulphur breath, nymphs dancing in groves of trees, elves and gnomes moving silently about their elvish and gnomish business, centaurs gazing silently toward the heavens with their sage cogitations. Fantastic worlds might lie just behind that curtain of mist, and all it would take is for someone to pull that veil aside and open up new places to enjoy and savor.

The mystery and fantasy of fog, the playground of the imagination…