One of the most fascinating things in nature, besides thunderstorms, is fog. It is something that never appears in the weather forecast. You cannot prepare for a foggy morning. It simply surprises you. In the early morning hours, fog wraps everything under its veil: houses, fields, forests.
There are many foggy mornings in autumn. People only notice them when they have already set off for their everyday errands. That is what happened to me one morning, too. I noticed the fog only after I had left home. There was a lot of it, and it was thick.
I headed out simply because I wanted to take some photos. Rarely is photography itself a reason for me to go anywhere, even though I take a lot of photos. This morning was an exception. I usually go for a walk a little later, but when I saw the fog, I couldn’t resist.
So I headed towards the fog. Towards the fields where it had gathered during the early morning hours, while everyone was still asleep.
I headed towards the field.
And the fog really was several times thicker there. It covered everything. The sun was a huge, bright blob, desperately peeking out from behind the fog. As if it were late for its shift, held back by the fog.
I started walking along the walkway that runs through the fields. The streetlights looked ghostly, their long row disappearing into the fog. There were snails on the walkway, brought out in large numbers by the damp night air.
I watched from the middle of the fields as the fog slowly began to lift. You cannot really see it disappearing. You simply realize that a little more of the landscape is visible, that you can see those trees behind the field a little more clearly.
I remembered a foggy morning at our cottage, when I woke up and noticed that the lake had disappeared. The children and I went down to the deck to wonder at and admire how the edge of the world seemed to have come right to our own shore. I wondered what it would have looked like there this morning, and felt sorry that I couldn’t be there this morning.
At the edge of the field, between the asphalt and the crops, there is a small strip where wild plants are allowed to live and flourish. I stepped up there.
The morning dew has climbed everywhere. Onto every blade of grass and every tree. The air was so damp that if you wave a dry tissue in it, it would be damp afterwards too.
It was starting to get light enough for me to see the trees in the distance, beyond the field, where the forest begins. The sky was beginning to turn blue too, promising a cloudless day. The sun could finally get to work.
I watched from the middle of the fields as the mist slowly began to lift. The sun made the moisture in the air visible to the bare eye. Like a microscopic rain shower. I could almost hear a faint tinkling when I listened very carefully.
If I were someone else, I would have sat down on that bench to enjoy the atmosphere and get my bottom wet. But since I am me, I went into the tall grass, risking stepping in dog poop, and photographed a beautiful spider web in the morning sun.
And then I turned to return and noticed a rainbow that had quietly formed behind me, like a bridge from one field to another. Its colours could not be distinguished, so it clearly wasn’t an ordinary rainbow after all. It was a fog bow.
A fog bow is formed by tiny fog droplets, smaller than raindrops. The droplets bend the light, creating the fog bow. Because the droplets are so small, the bow appears much more misty and almost colourless.
Apparently, the phenomenon is quite rare, so I was lucky to see one.
Great set of fog photos. I quite like fog, but often the photos come out horrible.