clarity of fog

I'm meandering along the shoreline, picking my way through the perfect imperfection of broken shells and bits of seaweed, taking a sweet moment to be drowned in the quirky silence of the sea, and the fog is thick. The tide is low, the waters still, and I know that the surface would be like quietly undulating glass, if I could see it. To my ear, there is no sound but my feet crunching, chewing slowly on the ground beneath me. Even the sea birds and the waves are observing a moment of silence.

I look out where the water should be, and see nothing but a wall of cotton as thick as sea--nothing penetrating the flawless white. This is perfection. The dense fog mutes the whole world, brings it in close, lets it seep into my heart, and feeds me in a deep way that I have somehow recognized since I was a child. In keeping me from seeing far, it forces me to see up close. And up close is usually where I need most to train my eyes, especially on the days when there is no clarity to be found in far-reaching. I'm lost inside the blessed soundlessness of seeing. Somewhere, from deep within the veil, bellows the sonorous call of a fog horn, long and ebony, and its echo ripples and resounds for a full 5 seconds over the beach and beyond, off across the sound. I count it out, one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four-one-thousand, five-one-thousand as it finally dissipates out of earshot. Somehow it doesn't shatter the perfect stillness, but merely greets it and genuflects on its way over the water.

My eyes are down now, searching the beach for the pretty European oyster shells that riddle the shore this time of year; I fill my pockets with these mothers-of-pearls, but I am finding them less frequently now. Something is changing, I think to myself. It feels subtle, but then I begin to notice little cast-off crab shells, fragmented into carapace and claw, littering the places where the tide has gone out and left evidence of what's happening under the water just off the shore, and I know now that the Dungeness and other crabs are beginning to return from their winter hiding places in the deeper waters of the sound, coming back to the shallows and the shores again, to grow and to molt and to continue the great cycle of life for another season.

The fog is lifting now, the waters begin lapping in the ferry wake, the quiet now retreating and bringing the little noises of life and industry into sharper detail; the sea birds resume their hunting and crying--for them, it is a new season, and I sense that for me too, maybe it is time to begin again.

--teri.