Fog defines this week.  In the morning it lies heavy upon the ground.  Close and overbearing, you cannot see the barn as you set out to feed.  Some afternoons the fog lightens.  Wispy and whispering strands lay across the ridge.

One afternoon, a strand of fog slipped east along the ridge just above a horse trail where half a dozen horses walked in the same direction.  The open ridge between horses and fog had me think of the Michaelangelo fresco The Creation of Adam.  The energy in the fresco is intense as God and Adam reach to one another.  Yet our focus always settles in that moment where fingers are an instant apart.  We’re drawn into space between fingers as if it were the fulness of creation.  I find it curious how a human hand with simple paint—water and mineral—could create such questioning space of energy and wonder: did they touch just a moment ago, are they about to touch, do they ever touch?

Fog is of this same energy and wonder.  Stepping out of the house for the morning feeding fog wraps cool moistness around you.  A few steps later and your home disappears.  No barn, no home, only you and fog exist as you walk.  At first you feel alone.  Then know you’re not.  Enveloping you, as a lover and friend, there is space with a coolness to face.  Making you aware of your warm existence within coat and britches.  There is an ask of relationship.  To know kinship.  To settle, to calm, to be and know you are as natural as fog.  You’re not asked to stay long.  Only to take a moment, between home and barn, and become enchanted.

Come afternoon, you’re in the pasture with cows and calves.  The fog has lifted moving nomadically along the ridge.  From a distance there is an intimacy.  Folding over a spur, the fog enters the draw slowly, knowingly, experiencing every fold, every crevice.  Crossing the drainage and slipping up the partner spur fog lightly caressing every grass blade, sage leaf, and rock of the spur.  Watching from a distance you’re surprised to find you are not an outsider and know the answer to questioning space.  For in the moment, between you and fog and draw, you experience the intimacy of the natural.