I’m writing this Sunday afternoon, with a beautiful sunny day outside.
I will say, however, it is nowhere near that sunny early in the mornings. I usually go out for walks early in the mornings, and it has been quite foggy some mornings.
The strangest, in some respects, was Saturday morning. I had to go into the CFIS station to do some voicework, and as I drove by the intersection at Fifth and Ospika, I noticed the lights heading north on Ospika were out.
That was about 5 a.m. When I came back an hour later, the fog had come down, and the setting was, for lack of a better word, eerie.
Looking up Ospika, there were no lights, and the fog meant I could see only dim shapes a short ways away, and nothing beyond that.
If I hadn’t known I was sort of in the middle of the city, it would have been easy to believe I was out in the wilderness in the fog.
When I went for a walk early Sunday morning, I discovered another thing I had not noticed before. The fog meant there was a fair bit of moisture in the air and at unpredictable intervals, a leaf would fall to the ground, rustling other branches as it did.
Unless you have experienced this yourself, it’s hard to convey how much like an animal of some sort in the bushes it sounds like the first couple of times you hear it.
I also got a kick out of something Sunday morning, walking through the fog. I was heading east on Fifth Avenue and saw someone coming toward me on foot in the bike lane.
As we approached each other, he nodded and said, “Good morning”.
I looked up at the fog and replied, “Good morning – I think”.
He paused, looked at his watch and then confirmed, “It is still morning, although it’s hard to tell”.
And yes, in case you were wondering, on these mornings when I am walking through heavy fog at 8:30 or 9, there are vehicles passing me without their headlights on.
I imagine the driver saying, “It’s 9 a.m. I don’t need my headlights on at this time of day.”
I then like to sort of fantasize about him meeting another driver with the same attitude and each of them blaming the other for not having their lights on, which would have prevented the collision.
I then remember to stay well off the edge of the sidewalk, just in case there as much fog inside that driver’s head as there is outside.