Fog Magic

When I was little, I loved a book called Fog Magic. It told the story of an eleven year old girl who discovered how to walk into the fog and find an alternate world. The catch is that when she turns twelve, this ability will end.

For a week, our town has been encased in a deep fog layer. The sun cannot muster up enough strength to burn through. After a few days, it becomes hard to take. We endure the weeks but on weekends we scheme how to break out of the fog.

I drive to the lake, but it is still foggy there. Though it is probably safe to skate, venturing onto the ice when I can’t see across the lake feels like going off into the unknown. Fog magic. Maybe we are braver at eleven.

The fog gives up at 5,000 feet, so we go there. The skiing is not good: so little snow, which some of the locals celebrate, perhaps forgetting that the mountains need a good winter or else we will be sizzling with wildfire come summer.

Because the woods are icy, we turn to walking roads, climbing to high points and along rivers in an effort to escape the fog, and in my case, stay in shape, since skiing usually does that. On the days that work holds me captive, I grudgingly visit the gym, though it gets harder and harder to go there, and I dream of my own home gym (guys throwing weights down, people listening to music without headphones, a guy who trails his own personal cigarette smoke cloud behind him).

Walking old roads. Photo by Gwen.

So I try to find joy in the fog. After all, we are stuck with it. It’s interesting, though, how I observe moods being influenced by weather. When I lived in an Alaskan rainforest, some people could not handle the constant downpour and lack of sun. They decamped as fast as they could, or they just grew more and more miserable. Living in the fog, I’m reminded of how we would race outside as soon as a tentative sun would appear. Yesterday, hiking twelve miles in the sun, I am reminded of how much I depend on it to show up.

above the fog.

At the tire shop, I am told my car is out of alignment. That’s not a surprise: I drive rough roads all summer, with monstrous potholes and teeth-rattling washboards. Like the car, I am out of alignment with this much fog. I wonder: If I were eleven, would it be different?

Then I think: as a writer, I am always walking through the fog to a different world. A new story idea appeared from nowhere the other day. This is how I hold on to being eleven. This, my own fog magic.