Friday Ramble - Drifting Along in the Fog

On September mornings, the village is often a mysterious place, the earth warmer than the air above and the meeting of the two elements turning otherwise mundane landscape features into entities fey and luminous. Autumn is upon us, and she is comfortable in her tenure of mist, rain, wind and madcap, tumbling leaves.

There is nothing like a good fog, and September dishes up some splendid atmospheric murks. Mist swirls around everything in the village, draping whiskery trees, power lines, and the telephone poles that poke out of it like the masts of sailing ships. It smooths the edges of everything and rounds the contours of house and street.

The wind scours leaves from the old trees near home, and they rustle underfoot as Beau and I wander along on our early walks. If we listen carefully, we can sometimes hear Cassie and Spencer walking beside us, their happy feet doing a kind of scuffling dance through the fallen, leafy treasure. My departed soulmate loved early morning rambles, and he is always tucked in my pocket when we go out.

Out of the pearly gray and sepia come sounds now and again. Birds converse in village hedgerows and geese move unseen among the clouds, singing as they pass over our heads. Doors open and close as sleepy residents collect their morning papers. There is the soft growling of automobiles and the rattle and hum of city buses, the muffled cadence of joggers gliding through the park, commuters heading downtown to work, children chattering on their way to school.

Once in a while, there is the whistle of a faraway train, usually only a faint echoing in the air. The sound brings back childhood memories of freight trains rumbling through the countryside in the wee hours of the morning and sounding their horns in warning as they approached crossings. Raindrops beat a staccato rhythm on the roofs of houses near home, and little rivers sing through the gutters with their freight of leaves and twigs. Taken all together, it is atmospheric and symphonic.

On such mornings, the world seems boundless and brimming with luminous possibility, soil and trees and sky and mist giving tongue in a language that is wild and compelling. Part of me is curled up in the warm with a mug of something hot and a good book. Other parts are out there drifting along with the fog and happy to be doing it.