I'm surrounded by fog. I walk through the house late at night and there is fog lurking outside every window. The lights in the the street show just deep enough into the yard to convince me that there's no escaping it. I am surrounded by fog.
I drove into town earlier tonight. The fog was some of the thickest I've encountered, and pretty predictable: wherever there were big spans of open land, make that open frozen land, there was thick fog. A large farmer's field that I love, planted in corn in mid-summer and not harvested until late, late summer, and then not cleared--or whatever you call chopping the cornstalks but not clearing completely--until the ground is frozen, often late November - mid-December, created the thickest fog tonight. It was the warm air hitting the ultra-cold ground that made the fog. Unfortunately I got behind a woman who'd apparently never experienced fog before while driving home. She went 30-35 and then 25-30 in an area where I'd felt pretty comfortable at 45 on the way into town. Oh well. She was probably white-knuckling it and that's completely understandable.
I was that lady in 1996 or '97. I was bringing Emily home from college in our van, stuffed to the hilt with her stuff--literally no space left--when we met suffocating fog on Route 11B outside Potsdam and had to make it to Malone on this back road. I could barely see the white line for more than 4 feet ahead of me on the right. And so I was driving about 10-15 mph and being passed--passed!-- by cars who obviously knew this road better than I did. And I was supposed to be home in time to see Jenny at her prom. That was one of the scariest times I've ever been driving; probably THE scariest time, come to think of it. But I did see Jenny at her prom--just dropped Emily at the house and went with the car still loaded, I'm pretty sure. She was beautiful and worth the effort!
The fog makes me think things I have to write tomorrow. I've been neglecting my writing endeavors because I'm scared of 1) not being successful and 2) being successful. And I have to stop focusing on writing about Nancy and just ... writing.
Tomorrow.
