A Foggy Morning Blurs the Sun

As I was leaving the house for school this morning, my phone rang. It was Zack, one of the sophomores who drives from this direction toward school.

He said, over a patchy cell phone line: "Uh, you might want to go the south way to school today...down by the bridge... there's some--and then his voice cut out entirely.
Well, I could tell by his tone that this wasn't about a terrible accident, so I knew:  he shares my love of the scenery, and today must be a gorgeous one for a camera.

I took the southern route.







At first I could only see a red glow, then a muffled sun, rising in cloudy soup.

Before long, however, I made out great patches of fog that had settled noiselessly into all the low-lying areas.














Down by the river, I dove into a dark tunnel of the stuff.

Then the road began to climb, and I emerged to the beauty of higher fields--sheeted in thin wisps of fog that reflected the sun like gold.





Such a beautiful morning!

Thanks, Zach. 

Out in the Fog

Here are some pictures taken on our ride to school this morning.

At first we thought the sun was going to come out and dissipate the fog a little, but the closer we got to town, the more it sank into the thick cloud bank. It was like clouds were sitting in the road ahead and filling up all the spaces around us, daring us to come closer and be swallowed up.

Tori was taking these pictures and talking at the same time.
"I wish we could walk on the clouds," she said. Then she immediately observed,
"but that would be a bad thing, because driving through clouds that thick,we'd never get to school."

I told her I thought it would be bad news for airplanes too.


Such are our deep discussions on the way to school on foggy mornings.

Foggy January Mornings

This is pretty much the way my week looked. Not just in the early morning drives to school, but in the worry and fear I carried like a haze around me. There are times when you don't know exactly what to do, but you know that doing nothing would be wrong. When you know that your decisions will affect those you care about, it makes the inside sky foggy.

"What do you say?"
"How do you tell them what to do?"
"If you give bad advice, will it ruin something beautiful in their lives?"

A few minutes ago I caught a look at myself in the restroom mirror. My face was still like this...clouded by streaks of uncertainty, my eyes dark with the purple clouds of a worried week, all streaky with silver sleeplessness.

Hopefully things will start looking better soon.
If I keep this up, I'll quickly become an old gray grouchy woman and have to start shaking my cane at the students.