FOG SURE BEATS SMOG

Last week, I decided I wanted to go see West Beach. I had driven on West Beach Road, but I had never stopped along the way. Charlie and I set off in the morning planning to spend the day at the beach. As we turned off Swantown/Crosby Road onto West Beach Road, we were met with a wall of fog. It stretched all around us. I couldn't see ahead of me, and I knew the ocean was to the right of me, but I couldn't even hear the waves. We seemed to travel in a bubble.

You know how quiet it is when you are in a fog bank? There was this lovely sense of Charlie and I being the only two creatures in the world. I could see fairly well, but I still drove slowly. I drove slowly because I didn't know what was up ahead, and I drove slowly to prolong the sense of quiet and isolation. Everything looks muted in the fog, almost like a impressionist painting, where the colors blend into each other and experience takes over from form. You're not sure what your looking at until your almost upon it.

Along the way, we pulled into a private cul de sac. There was a rocky beach, Charlie and I walked along the rocks for awhile. He went down on the wet sand but didn't seem to like the waves that came close to the shore. There was a bench right at the edge of the rocks and we sat companionably enjoying the quiet. As I often find myself doing here on Whidbey Island, I thanked God. I thanked God for the beauty of the fog, for the peaceful time to reflect on God's gift of weather, and for an hour to do nothing but meditate in the quiet. Lunch time came and I hadn't brought us anything to eat, so reluctantly we moved off our bench and headed home through the lifting fog into the bright sunlight of Harrier Circle.