As the late spring days have begun to grow warmer, a feature on my drive to work these last two weeks has been morning fog. I can’t really attest to the kind of fog that it is; I’m sure there’s a very fancy meteorological term for it, but it’s the kind that’s low to the ground and only found in large, open fields. As my window of time driving to work currently coincides with the sunrise, it has made for some enchanting scenery and so these past five days I decided to take my camera along with me and record a bit of it.

Fog of course is one of those aspects of nature that sometimes we might find beautiful or gives us a feeling of uncertainty. Naturally fog in paintings, literature, and movies have been used for this effect, to either create a sense of serenity such as light coming through a wooded forest or wispy fog across a smooth farm pond, or to create anxiety such as a person lost in an urban area and thinking they are being followed or making the fog itself the antagonist like in John Carpenter’s horror classic The Fog.

An aspect of fog I like is that it makes me view something like the familiar drive to work in a new perspective. Suddenly I notice a tree line I hadn’t before, low lying bushes now look like rocks rising from an ocean, dead trees and old barns become features rather than background.

The other thing that has struck me as I begin this week saying goodbye to my graduating seniors, their futures metaphorically might resemble fog to them. In a way, the future is shrouded in mystery, such that it might fill them with anxiety because of the unknown nature, but on the other hand, it could be exhilarating, something in which one might find adventure. Either way, anxiety or adventure, if they wait long enough, the fog will burn away with the rising sun and the objects obscured by the fog, which they were frightened or unsure of, once exposed to the light of will reveal themselves to be the reality they know; just a tree, or a rock, or a shrub.