The Fog

Carl Sandburg wrote, “The fog comes in on little cat feet,” but this morning’s fog roared into the bay like a lion. It filled the bay and overflowed onto the shores, wiping out the far end of the bridge, so that it looked like it led to Heaven. Or Hell. Or to an alien world. 

I stood at the edge of the bridge, peering across it as far as I could see, until my vision was lost in the dense cloud of the fog. It was so thick, so overwhelming, that it truly looked like the world ended where the fog began. I knew this wasn’t the case. I knew the bridge was still there, the far shore was still there, despite the illusion of the fog dissolving solid steel, solid land, replacing both with an amorphous cloud of white. 

But knowing and believing are not the same thing. 

And so I stood, toes on the suddenly insubstantial bridge, heels on the solid ground of the shore I could still see. 

My mind filled with the many meanings of bridges and of fog. Bridges connected things, connected one land with another. Bridges spanned uncrossable spaces: valleys, chasms, rivers, lakes, oceans. Well, the arms and legs of oceans that we call bays, or sounds, or inlets. Bridges connected the dots of island chains and tenuously hitched islands to mainlands. 

Symbolically, bridges were what we built to connect people: husband and wife, sisters and brothers, old friends and new, yesterday and today and tomorrow. Bridges were what we burned when we destroyed those connections, those relationships. They were what we tried to rebuild when we had a change of heart.

Fog, now. Not much positive about fog. Fog was confusion, chaos, uncertainty. Fog was cold, and damp, and scary. Fog was what we felt we were in when we awoke from a not-so-restful night’s sleep. Fog was what we operated in when we were tired, or sick, or depressed. Fog was what we lost our way in. Fog was what monsters emerged from.

I gazed into the fog and wondered what kind of fog this was. It seemed oddly solid, more a wall than a blanket. Oddly specific, focusing on this bridge, this span of a few miles connecting two neighborhoods. I wondered, if I got back in my car and drove across the bridge, if I would actually make it to the other side. Would that fog bank be a fog wall, and impassable? Would it swallow me up, cutting me off from this side, making me a permanent part of that cloud?

I wondered if I really wanted to know the answers to those questions.

However, I couldn’t just stand here forever. I had to decide. What to do? What would be my next move?

As I watched, frozen in indecision, a car crept carefully past me to enter the bridge. I watched it go, slowly, hesitantly, nervously. Would it make it? It was silver-white, just a bit more solid than the fog. It approached the fog bank. Inched its way in. And disappeared.

Well, if he could do it, so could I. Taking it as a sign, I got back in my car. I followed the path of that brave silver car, inch by inch, into the unknown. As I neared the fog, it seemed to grow more solid. Its color changed from white, to grey, to silver. It reached for me, enwrapped me, surrounded me. It swallowed me up. Before me, all I could see was fog. Behind me was … nothing. 

So here I am. In a wide, empty, white-and-silver world. There’s plenty of room here. Won’t you join me?