FOG

Carl Sandberg wrote:

"THE fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches         

and then moves on."

London is famous for its foggy nights..."Pea Soup", they call it.  The fact is that a lot of Europe has some very thick fog.  In Germany, especially where rivers come together in deep valleys, some of the thickest fog I have ever seen develops.  When it gets so thick you can't see where you are going, the hair raises on the back of your neck and the animal instincts come to the surface; you face a curtain not knowing what is ahead or behind.   

I remember coming back to Germany in 1982 after having spent a couple of months in a school in the States.  Our plane delayed landing because of fog at Frankfurt.  We circled for what seemed to be forever waiting for a clear spot.  After a couple of failed attempts, the captain said that if we couldn't set down in the next hour we would be diverted to Munich.  Almost as soon as he made that announcement, we started descending again.  The wheels and flaps deployed with those whining, grinding sounds.  I was looking out the window at a gray, featureless world.  I thought I saw a water tower in the distance, then another one, then the wheels touched down.  The "water towers" had been the landing lights on the runway.  Yep, that is thick fog.

When it gets that thick, a lot of people still think they can drive in it.  Maybe they think they can feel their way home.  I do know that the autobahns in Germany have had some of the worst chain collisions on earth.  When one fellow saw that he had just crept past his exit, he decided to back up (yes, folks, he backed up on the Autobahn...the famous roads in Germany that have no speed limits, even in the fog) to get back to it.  That pile-up was the worst I remember, about three hundred cars and if memory serves, about twenty dead.

But when it isn't that thick, when it is wispy and uneven, alternately hiding and revealing what is around you, it has an almost romantic quality.  We lived in the Monterey, California area a lot during my Army career...we were stationed at Fort Ord four times.  Fog-watching is a fun occupation there.  There is a steep ridge that runs between Monterey and Carmel.  When the fog starts building up on the Carmel side it "rolls in" and works its way up the backside of the ridge then spills over like a slow-motion waterfall of white, wispy foam and slides down the nearside of the ridge.  I wish I had a nickel for everytime I have sat in the parking lot of the Del Monte Shopping Center and watched that particular meterological phenomenon...and then I'd give 'em all back to watch it again. 

Fog moves like that.  We lived on Fort Ord in the seventies, on a little street of very old military housing called 4th Army Road.  It was a quiet neighborhood.  From our front porch you could look west down the hill all the way to Monterey Bay.  We had piney trees and grass and an ocean view.  Pretty cool for a Spec4 and family.  The fog would start up almost every evening, forming up over the bay, then creeping  up the hill.  It came like a white wall, sliding up the hill without making a noise.  We could sit on the front porch and watch the fog's progress until it reached us, bringing a dampness and a chill that drove us back inside. 

When I was in basic training there was a meningitis breakout and we had to have special measures to avoid it.  One of the measures was leaving all the windows open a certain amount all night.  We would watch the night fog drift into the windows, dissipating almost immediately, but continuing with the effort all night.  I don't know how effective it was or wasn't at defeating meningitis, but we didn't have any cases in my platoon...three cases of pneumonia...but no meningitis.  One of the cool things about the fog was at the rifle ranges.  There was a KD (Known Distance) range with a 400 meter line of targets.  When it was light fog, not thick enough to close the range but enough to make things a little hazy, you could see the vortices of the bullets as they made their half-second trip to the target.

When we lived there in the eighties, we became fond of Cannery Row and some of the really neat shops and restaurants.  We loved the foggy nights, leaving the Captain's Galley (where I learned to LOVE clam chowder) and walking to the parking lot, bundled up and shivery against the chill, the smell of fog and salt air,  trying to cuddle as we walked....great memories.

London can give you Big Ben poking out of the fog, San Francisco can be breath-taking with the Golden Gate's towers rising out of the sea of fog.  The Neckar Valley fills with it, obscuring the dozens of castles on the ridges.  But for my money, the shore from Big Sur to Santa Clara provides the most inspiring and uplifting fogscapes on Earth.