Faces of fog, atmospheric and metaphorical

             
                  The fog was thick over the Cranberry Isles early this morning. There was no distance to see out our bedroom windows, only a blank backdrop of gray. By the time I took Daisy for a walk around the east end of Sutton it was beginning to dissolve. The other Cranberries hovered in the distance, looking like islands in the clouds, fantasy worlds floating in the sky that might disappear before you reached them. By the time we had rounded the tip of the island, rays of sunlight pierced the cloud cover, transforming a patch of sea into sparkling light. An hour later, only wisps of fog remained, curling up over the land in soft tendrils under a blueing sky. The rounded mountaintops of Mt. Desert Island emerged, sentinels of strength. Fog can be beautiful. Its soft blanket can be a comforting embrace, its lifting a celebratory spectacle.
                Some days the fog never lifts. We move through its damp, gray suspension, isolated from the world. On those days we might tend toward restlessness, disorientation, dissatisfaction. We grow impatient for change.
               Fog beckons introspection. It suggests detachment, maybe a loss of clarity.  No wonder there are times we say our minds are in a fog when we feel lost. Two people I love are working through metaphorical fogs right now (probably more – but two that I know of). One’s fog is interwoven with grief, the other’s is a chronic fog of depression and anxiety. My hope for them, and for you when your fog rolls in, is that your fog’s soft enveloping allows you the time you need for quiet. May it not stay too long. Rest assured, it will dissolve eventually in wispy tendrils that cling for a time. Rays of sun will sneak through the cloud cover, revealing sparkles of light.