Taking the Sky Road Home

Only in September and October do sunsets like this occur, ground mist creeping through fields and trees below skies that resemble a Maxfield Parrish painting. The clouds look like trails, and they remind me of the title I conferred on a sunset image a few years ago, "Taking the Sky Road Home".

Fog and ground mist are common entities at sunrise and nightfall here in autumn. The clouds of condensed moisture are generated by the earth's slow breathing and float along above the surface. We humans are cloud-breathing dragons - we generate our own mists and fogs as we take air into our lungs and expel it again. Trees and forests breathe in and out too. As above so below, sky, humans, trees and the earth all breathing in and out together. The rosy streaks painting the sky above our heads are kin to the nebulous veil drifting along below.

We call visible murky stuff "fog" when it reduces visibility to less than 1,000 metres, and we call it "mist" when we can see further than 1,000 meters through it. One can just make out farm buildings way in the distance in the second photo, so this is mist rather than fog, and a right fine mist it is, all gauzy and ethereal and slightly spooky.

We might be anywhere in the world, but we (Beau and I) are leaning against an old rail fence in the eastern Ontario highlands on a cool night in September. My collar is turned up against the wind, and we watch as another day fades. I take photo after photo, hoping just one or two will turn out. The clouds, the setting sun and the veils of gossamer condensation floating above the earth are beyond words. Why am I trying to describe them in an utterly graceless and oh-so-inadequate net of words?

The sun slides below the horizon, another autumn day folds up like an umbrella, and the stars come out. A brief interval, but perfect in every way.