Winslow Homer: The Fog Warning (1905 - 1915)

" … remind us what we cannot see …"

I hail from the country Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer must have hailed from. Come November, and through into the following year, we experience deep, sometimes freezing fogs. We locals curse their arrival as our nearby neighbors enjoy clear skies. We valley-dwellers know the curse. We lose our horizon. We lose our stars. We cannot see to the end of our own block. We drive as if suspended within space and time, both more visible than useful. We hear of the Fog of War but know The Fog of Everything, for fog becomes our baseline experience through those darkening weeks. We have The Fog of Breakfast, The Fog of Lunch, The Fog of Supper, as well as The Fog of Midnight and The Fog of Noon. Veterans have spent at least one night in Seattle after their late-night flight was forced back due to limited landing visibility here. We could see clear down to the ground but not straight ahead. Fog messes with your head.

I'm trying a fresh attitude toward our hazy resident this season. I've decided to consider it a benefit rather than a curse. I felt immersed in a warm cocoon when The Muse and I drove around yesterday morning. I had turned the heat up high and could see well enough in every direction except up into the sky. We seemed to float on our errend, suspended out of time and out of concern. We were all alone, warm, and almost invisible. For all I know, we might have been immutable then, eternal for that instant, frozen as if in amber, safe, protected. The padding took the edge off of everything. Without sharp corners, the world seemed as if it had been inflated, just so many balloons, pillows, and sails. I spotted spots of rime forming on branches and grasses; the evidence fog leaves behind as it passes.

I see myself immersed in fogs. The Fog of my Intelligence and The Fog of my Ignorance, each fog a reminder of the presence of whatever I've missed. The mist insists that I've missed something, that something essential must be missing from my impression. The fog helps keep me humble and seeking, peeking around my certainties, hoping for insights. I recognize that I thrive on my misconceptions and understand all of precisely nothing. I live on rumors and hints, and yet those seem entirely adequate. What hubris to insist that I might understand. The fog reminds me that mystery rules here, that precision might well be a fantasy, and that cause and effect might both be best considered impressionistic characteristics. I nonetheless draw conclusions.

I sometimes tire of not being able to find my horizon. I grow weary of dreary noontimes. I can drive short miles to get my head above the inverted clouds. There, the horizon seems to stretch further than there. Even the odd-angled late-year sun seems as bright as August after my immersion in the fog. However long I visit that vista, I recognize that I must and will return to the valley floor again, where The Fog of Everything rules. The cold damp will chase me inside, where I'll construct a roaring fire fierce enough to warm me through. I curl up with a book, and when I look outside, I see only a reflection of me peering back in at me. I turn self-referential and satisfied, wholly contained for hibernation. I pity those who never experience snow, but I pity more those who somehow manage to sidestep the Fogging experience. It comes to remind us what we cannot see and probably never really needed to see for ourselves.

©2023 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #GoodNuff, #PureSchmaltz