Sep
3
2009
Out of the Fog
Author: Deb Trotter
Fog is an odd thing.
Sometimes it frightens me. Sometimes it comforts me.
I love the forboding symbolism of fog, especially in books and movies.
Heathcliff on the moors in Wuthering Heights. Scarlett O'Hara running through a hazy dream, frantically searching. Stephen King's small town in Maine, engulfed by "The Mist," in a gruesome world changed by unspeakable horrors.
And then there was Alfred Hitchcock's movie, "The Birds."
We were there last week, John and I. In Bodega Bay, on the northern coast of California.
There really is a Sandpiper Restaurant. There really are birds. Everywhere. And there really is fog. Like Hitchcock's star, Tippi Hedren. Aloof. Sensuous. Cool. Mysterious.
There really is fog on the marshes. Covering the houses on the windswept hills. Creeping through the streets. And weaving in and out between the silhouettes of the birds.
On the southern coast of Big Sur the fog met us again. It would seem somehow inappropriate to me if there were no fog there.
Finally, in San Francisco, we came to know the true nature of fog.
You know, if you have been there, what I mean.
Fog in San Francisco is quite magical.
Like the fog of London. Or the highlands hills in the mountains of North Carolina. The ivy covered stone walled roads of Ireland. The fishing towns of the New England coast.
You can always see the fog coming. Ever so softly.
As Robert Frost would say, "It comes on little cat feet."
But in San Francisco, it comes in a peculiar way. It winds and twists - and somehow changes the whole city into two different places.
It belongs.
Changing the color of the buildings. The sky. The sea.
The bright pinks. The sad blues. The clear turquoises? Gone.
Replaced by a vague dreamland.
Perhaps you aren't really there at all.
Perhaps you are in another time.
And you like who you are.
San Francisco is a place where you are forced to find yourself.
I've been in a kind of fog myself this summer.
Lost in the mist of life, both good and bad.
Wonderful discoveries. Artistic challenges. The obligation and excitement of success.
One day, pride. The next, guilt.
One week laughter. The joys of being wife, mother, daughter, friend, artist.
The next week, a few tears. Some are mysterious tears that trickle down for no good reason. And some have been waiting for my birthday – to tell me that my next birtday will be a mile stone.
And so the fog comes. And it goes.
And I am ready to put on my cowgirl boots and mosey on into it in my own way. For the fog of the West leads to my own special dream. And I welcome its mystery, its memory, and its promise.
Welcome, fog! And whether you choose to lift or not, I am ready.
