Misty Ridge Musings

I sit, watching the mist creep up the hillside. I envy the Inuit, who have a flurry words for snow. I need more words for the Mist. There is “fog”, there is “mist” and that is it. Not at all adequate to describe the creature that lives here in the hills between the river and the sky. Oh yes, and then there’s “cloud”, for when the mist lifts from earth to float free in sky. Still not enough.
This, now, is the mist that awakens between winter and spring; rising from the valley, peeling off the river as warm air wafts over the winter landscape. It embraces us, wrapping us in fog. We are, in fact, under a “dense fog advisory”. But this is not something to be wary of, but rather to be relished, just as those moments of fog between sleep and awakening, where we wander in the land of mystery.
The snow now is gone except for the northern slopes and the artificial piles created by humans, who insist on clearing paths for their Important Activities.
As the sun warms the still-sleeping earth, the fog deepens. But this is the fog that precedes a sunny day, the fog that burns off and leaves a clarity, fresh and new. As the fog clears, so too does my funk. The buds are swelling, the earth is waking. It is time!