Every Fog has its Day

In my 35min commute to work I frequently hit patches of fog in the morning. Today was more variable than usual. I started with a bright sunny morning requiring sunglasses. Upon getting on the highway glasses were off, headlights were on, and I was in fog. I fairly heavy fog too. The kind where if you drive along you'd go much slower than I was going, but on the highway you keep a visible distance from the car infront of you and maintain speed to keep the visible distance.

For the past few months I've enjoyed the seasonable morning drive. With the summer sun it's nice to see the world awake before I'm at work. In the winter it is a more gloomy drive in the dark. Fog seems to get in the way of a pleasant drive.

My first feeling was the fog wraps you up in a colorless blanket. Upon further thinking, it's not colorless. It is grey. A very ho-hum dull color. Fog is essentially a cloud. A cloud infront of your eyes wipes out all other colors; yet framed in sky has streams whiter than cotton, with wonderful shades of blue, red and grey that can't be matched by any pantones or paint department.

Then I stumble upon this quote:
"Lastly, there is this value about the colour that men call colourless: that it suggest in some way the mixed and troubled average of existence, especially in its quality of strife and expectation of promise. Grey is a colour that always seems on the eve of changing to some other colour; of brightening into blue, or blanching into white, or breaking into green or gold. So we may be perpetually reminded of the indefinite hope that is in doubt itself; and when there is grey weather on our hills or grey hair on our heads perhaps they may still remind us of the morning."
-GK Chesterton

I have 2 windows by my desk that provide some nice daydreaming and cloud watching scenery. Once you look past the cars, the fence, and the steel mill next door; yes, it's very scenic. Ok not really. Really I have the attention span of a gnat and usually enjoy the distractions. I'm not sure how big a gnat's attention span is, but I'm sure it's small. The clouds are awesome to focus on for view and thought. They can tell of what they're bringing weather wise. You can assign stories and characters to the shapes. They can unite to bring relief with shade or rain; or break to reveal something beyond them that is sustaining the world.

It seems that the morning fog is working to hide something. It works hard to keep things covered and always yields to the burning power of the sun. The light is needed to see all of the true colors. It's like a morning within a morning. The fog may have its time of day, but it is only a precursor to the revealing light.