The Fog Knows Things

When I was a kid, fog made me uneasy. Not the high-up kind that clings to the Redwood trees like cotton batting or the sort that softens the world at sunrise. No, I’m talking about ground fog—the low-lying kind that creeps in on cat feet, like that poem says, and settles itself across the yard like it’s up to something.

I remember standing at our back window, watching it roll in like some ghostly tide. It moved around as if it were scouting the area.

And if you stared long enough, which I always did because I hadn’t learned better yet, the fog would start to show you shapes.

Faces. People, maybe, or the outlines of something that used to be people. I once swore I saw a man in a bowler hat walking through it, limping a little, head bowed as if he’d lost his glasses and was trying to remember where he left them back in 1912.

Of course, I told my younger brother about this, and he told me two things. One, I watched too much TV, and two, fog was just water vapor.

It didn’t help when, in 1984, I watched The Fog, a 1980 horror movie featuring ghost pirates and revenge, all the things that don’t help me sleep well at night. That movie hit all the notes I had been humming to myself since age six.

Do people walk out of the fog? Yep.

Fog with a purpose? Absolutely.

Creeping mist that knows where you live and doesn’t need a key to get in? Check, check, and check.

That night, I slept with a night light on, the covers pulled up to my nose, which I realize now is a poor defense against supernatural maritime revenge. But it made me feel better.

These days, I live in the high desert, where fog is rare and generally out of place. It doesn’t sneak up on you anymore—it has to drive in from out of town and hope you’re still home.

Out here, the mornings are mostly clear and sharp-edged. You can see for miles, and the horizon doesn’t hide things; it dares them to show up.

Still, now and then, just after a monsoon storm or during a freak chill in spring, I’ll catch a patch of it—low and sneaky—slipping through the sagebrush or curling at the edges of the fields like it’s trying to remember what it came here for. And wouldn’t you know, sometimes I think I see those shapes–again.

The man in the bowler hat. A woman in a long dress holding something—maybe a lantern, perhaps a rolling pin, it’s hard to say.

And I find myself backing up from the window just a little, not because I believe in ghost pirates, but because there’s a small, persistent part of me that does.

So, no offense to my brother and his science book explanations. I’m sure fog is just water vapor. But I also think it has good hearing, a lengthy memory, and a taste for the theatrical.

And if it wants to keep a few secrets? That’s its business and ain’t mine.