Walking into Fog

Each morning, pretty early, my dog and I go for a walk. This multipurpose walk is for my exercise and her socialization, along with a potty break. For her, not me.

And when I say early, the sun is not up. During the academic year this is because I have early office hours, and have to get our walk in before I go to school. In the summer, this is because it is the only portion of the day I find remotely habitable. But honestly, I like being out in the day before it gets all used up by other folks. I have a friend who says its my job to wake up God. Now theologically I don't buy that, but I like the sentiment.

One of the strange perks of being up and out so early is you can catch unusual sites. It is so quiet during the early morning hours you can hear the rain as it approaches. During an atypical outbreak of summer showers, we got caught in a downpour because I could not figure out what the strange sound was—it was the intermittent rain on the metal awnings of the carport. But even more interesting was walking into the fog.

Because of the showers we had a couple of days in a row, a dense fog advisory was issued. Dangerous for those of you moving about in your vehicles on the way to work, but the beauty of walking early is that the fog was only descending. So which each lap, we go around three times, the fog dropped closer and closer to earth. There was a surreal awareness that if we kept going around, soon we would be walking on faith, not sight. And it does descend on little cat's feet, slyly even though we were watching.

It is a thin place to walk into the fog.