Fog is like rain that has been caught in the act. It hangs there, motionless, guilty, waiting for...

Fog is like rain that has been caught in the act.

It hangs there, motionless, guilty, waiting for you to chew it out. You who grew up in temperate climates may be able to view it as just an ordinary if not everyday occurrence, but fog is really weird. It turns the landscape into some kind of cheap horror film, hushed and still, waiting for the monster to jump out of the shadows. Trees and buildings fade into the distance too quickly, like those early 90s flight simulators where they couldn't render enough polygons. As I walk home from an unexpected "Christmas" dinner, everything is deathly quiet. Every light is surrounded by a halo, and the air is full of a golden glow from the nearby buildings as I walk along the lake path, the loudest noise my own breathing as I tread soundlessly over compacted, wet leaves. The air is totally motionless, insulated by the fog, and the lakes look incredible, like someone has cunningly inserted some giant mirrors into the turf. The silhouettes of the trees reflect perfectly in the lake's surface, an incongruous pool of crystal-clarity in a world where everything else is hazy and indistinct. As you step out into the fog for the first time, you feel the tiny little drop lets stick to your face as you walk into them, a gentle rain of your own making. I imagine I am leaving a little tunnel of dry air behind me, as I pick up all the moisture in front of me. It isn't like the steam from the shower or tropical rainclouds when they dip onto the hills; the fog is light and easy to breathe, a delicate candyfloss packing material for the world, to keep it steady as it bumps around. As I type this now, the world is wrapped up in gold as the fog swirls slowly through the open window, chilling my fingers but reminding me of the compulsion to put down the words that were running through my head as I walked back home.

Fog is weird. But it is beautiful.