Morning Fog

There is an enchantment unique to summer mornings that are shrouded in fog. It adds a touch of mystery, of slowed down energy to summer's exuberance. Winter and autumn fog can be deadly and therefore are often stressful, dangerous. But that early morning summer fog brings a hint of magic, of mystery to the hustle and bustle, the relentless heat , the bright light, the long nights, with their brief quiet cover, temporarily obscuring everything around us. Mystery is something we are drawn to, and mist, or fog, adds a shade of mystery to our surroundings. We can't quite see everything clearly, and as we know the day will be very bright and hot, that short interlude between precise and blurry feels comforting. As the sun starts piercing through the mist, its light plays magic with what it starts to reveal: flowers sparkle like precious jewels, cobwebs look like dazzling necklaces, the dew on trees and grass shimmer to our eyes, and all the things we thought were ordinary reveal themselves as wonderful, enchanting. By the time the full brightness of the day hits, we are all right with it as we realize that heat is not all there is to summer. I used to ride my bicycle to school in Belgium, all the years from when I was 12, until I was 19, and one of my fondest memories of morning early summer fog was discovering my eyelashes were covered in it, by the time I got to school. It made me feel like a partly other world being, maybe a forest nymph. It was a fun sensation. I also remember the sound of my dynamo that gave light to my bicycle as its ray pierced through the morning fog, making approaching bicyclists and scooter riders coming from the opposite side seem like characters out of a Sherlock Holmes movie. It made the whole mechanical experience of riding to school, and for others, riding to work, seem a bit surreal. Man's machines disturbing nature's silence and magic, adding an element of existential melancholy to the daily routine, reminding me of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, which I had to read and study in the original Greek when I was 14. Morning fog is charming to me, when I can be in my garden or by the ocean, away from the mechanical madness the world has become, or perhaps always was.