This is my favorite weather. It sounds strange to say that. People are supposed to love sunshine and warmth. But there is something about a good mist that has always appealed to me. I don’t know if I can fully explain. It comforts, it cloaks, it confounds. For a brief moment, it makes the jaded world and everything under its veil mysterious again. It makes one’s little world an island.
It was an unseasonably warm spell and the thick mist that descended on the farm lasted all day. I’ve often felt that some perpetually mist-shrouded place, wherever that may be, is my natural habitat. I would happily live half my life in days like this. The land softly veiled in white, secluded by curtains of cloud, everything hushed. An otherworldly peace settles over all as the familiar landscape continually advances and recedes, approaches and withdraws from view. For someone who doesn't believe in the supernatural, this may be as close as I’ll ever get.
I had to leave the farm briefly to go buy feed. As I drove over the mountain, much of the fog lifted. But as I returned home, I could see from the summit how the bowl of the valley was filled to the brim with a thick cloud. Seeing the valley below completely obscured this way was surreal—almost as surreal as the feeling of driving down into that cloud-filled cauldron, descending into the dense, opaque air below. I had spent the day inside that murky kingdom, the realm of mist. From above it looked solid, formidable, impenetrable. Inside, it looked like this: