Foggy nights.

"Fog as thick as pea soup." Depending on your opinion of pea soup, this expression sounds either yummy or shudder-inducing. Either way, there's little denying that fog is often two things at once: beautiful and mysterious, or perhaps enticing and kinda freaky.

I've always loved the fog. I love the silence of it, how when it's really thick you can yell into it and you may as well be yelling into a heavily-walled vault; almost as though the sound is confused. I also love how when you walk (or better yet, run) through fog, the mist deposits itself on every part of you where it can find purchase. 


Many is the time I've come back from a foggy run and quickly found a mirror to examine the tiny droplets of water clinging to my eyebrows, hair, and the teensy-fine hairs on my cheeks; the hairs I never notice until fog so triumphantly displays them. For a moment, I am covered in an intricate dusting of shimmering white water. Cleansed by the fog.

We have had some spectacular fog these last couple of nights. I was up twice with Haven last night and each time I looked outside to see the empty streets laden with thick, seemingly impenetrable fog. The traffic light on the corner was straining against it, sending a smeared, red mess of light through my kitchen window. I should have been hurrying up to bed after settling Haven back to sleep, but I waited it out, wanting to see each colour: red, green, yellow and red again, each one as stymied as the last.

Victoria is a coastal city, so it's not unusual to have great fog, but it's also a very windy city, so it's nice when the wind dies down long enough to give the fog an opportunity to linger. To linger and rest, and hover and settle, to creep and drift. 


To me, there's an inherent nostalgia to fog, as if its misty borders are the blurred and fraying edges of a beloved photographic memory; a memory I've yet to forge, but am struggling to imagine.