Fog at Hillingdon by David K. Langford

Author:David K. Langford [Langford, David K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 2015-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

In my mind, December and January are the foggiest months. There can be fog in any season, but those cold-weather winter fogs are the ones I think of first: days and nights in which the familiar world is taken away, and can this not also be a definition for adventure? I am reminded of a Eudora Welty quote, “All serious daring starts from within.”

In the new world of fog, you move more slowly, on foot, or, certainly, in a vehicle. Attempts to illuminate your way are futile, counterproductive. The world is reshaped by fog, is made small, so small, and again, in such contraction, the world of imagination can be kindled, can burn brighter, from that creative ignition Welty speaks of, the spark that must always be in us, and which may glow brightest when there is little else to be seen.

I keep thinking about Langford’s assertion that color emerges most flamboyantly in fog—is not muted, as we might assume, but pops and burns. I am red-green colorblind, am drawn more to shapes and patterns, I think, than the mosaics and nuances of color, so I could not agree or disagree. But for any number of reasons, I suspect he is correct, for in fog I feel this same incandescent crackling emotional response of occasional specificity—the fine detail amidst the vast overburden of fog’s abstraction. Sharply, in fog, the mind lights up, not all at once, with swirl and speed, but one gripping and vibrant filament at a time.

One such instance I am thinking of occurred when I was very young, nine or ten. My father, grandfather, uncle, brothers, cousins, and I were up at our deer lease in the Hill Country on a New Year’s Eve weekend, when there was an ice storm and thick fog, not the sweet little burn-off kind, not the evanescent hour’s worth, but a real brute of a sock-in, and a night fog.

Back then, we got our water from the creek. I had gone down with a metal pail to break through the thin ice to gather some. As I crouched there, feeling in that fog and darkness the tug and gurgle of the big pail filling, I heard geese honking overhead. They had to have been flying above the fog, though perhaps too they found themselves somehow in it—and it seemed to me they were tired and trying to land, but could find nowhere to land as they circled above me, braying.

Did they know I was below? Was my flashlight a dim-glowing beacon, in all that fog? I could feel their agitation keenly. I looked up the hill toward the cabin, itself but a small glowing in the fog, and I realized that was what they were fixing on—the sole light, back then, for many miles.

They kept circling and circling, drawn to it, it seemed, which suggested they too might be disoriented. I had never experienced such a thing nor have I since. I have thought about it now and again in the

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