fog

the temperature is rising after days (months?) of unseasonable cold. a fog moved in silently over the landscape, thickening and settling in as i drew nearer to my weekday home. it at once obscured and made the bare, black trees more noticeable, more striking in their height, their branches more numerous and intricate against the greyish white of the fog. a hush settled over the landscape, like it had been swaddled in cotton, dampening all sound, save the odd birdcall, i imagined from the cocoon of my car, similarly grey and nondescript as it sped along the road. i didn't actually hear any birds, but their calls would both carry and be muffled by the fog and i could hear them in my head. fog transforms the ordinary into something extraordinary. your imagination fills in what's hidden. i exclaimed that i found the trees magical; my friend's daughter shivered and said she found them spooky. to her they were somehow alien and foreboding. the fog the same, our stories of it different. there's a life lesson in that somewhere.