SOL25-0916

The marine layer rolls in like a whispered secret,
softening the edges of the Oregon Coast and
turning the familiar into something dreamlike.
Foggy mornings here aren’t gloomy,
they’re pure magic.

The Oregon Coast

I.
Supper was take-out—clam chowder and sandwiches. We sat by the fire; a softness surrounded us. The deck door was open and the sound of the surf and the smell of cool salt air pervaded our room. Voices and laughter drifted up from the promenade where walkers strolled beneath the dim light of vintage lampposts. Some slowly, close like lovers. Others briskly, burning calories, toning muscles. A few jogged. Children ran circles around their grandparents, playing tag and squealing. An occasional cyclist whooshed past. Daylight was fading and dusk was descending.

II.
I stepped out onto our second-story deck and leaned against the railing. A blanket of sea fog was slowly rolling in, up out of the ocean like the breath of a sea monster that had come too close to the shore. It covered the surf and flowed over the sand where we had walked and swept across the sea grass covering the dunes that protect from high tides.

III.
I peered into the fog. Surf and sand was no longer visible, as if the coastline did not exist. The sound of the breakers crashing against the beach—constant, predictable like the ticking of an old kitchen clock—was muffled. The dunes disappeared. Slowly the fog crept over the promenade. The lights of the lampposts became ghostly, glowing orbs. A lone couple became grey silhouettes and then faded away. The night became still.

IV.
Fog engulfed the first floor decks below me. I looked above, into the night. It was black. Then the fog began to rise. Slowly it wrapped around me. It was surreal, nothing short of magical. But its damp chill forced me to seek warmth—to sit by our crackling fire, to sip a mug of hot chocolate, to savor peacefulness in the presence of my husband.

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Writing about my writing . . .

Word choice.
Don’t you just love the phrase ghostly, glowing orbs? The alliteration? And orb?
I wanted to describe the light of the lampposts in the fog. You know, that kind of blurred light. I thought of ghostly. I tried ghostly light. Light didn’t work. So, I searched with the question, “How does a light look in fog?”

Here’s what AI gave me: “In fog, a light appears blurred, diffused, surrounded by a visible halo or glow due to the ‘Tyndall effect‘. The dense water droplets in the fog scatter the light’s rays in all directions, but the light that is scattered towards your eyes creates the bright, glow-like effect you see around the source. This scattering effect is powerful enough to make it difficult to distinguish a clear image of the light source itself, especially if it’s far away, leading to the blurred appearance.”

I liked the word glow. It paired well with the word ghostly. With the alliteration of /g/, I made a sound connection between the description of the lights on the lampposts and my topic, fog: ghostly glow. But even that wasn’t quite right. I played around with ghostly and glow and thought about changing glow from a noun to a participle so it could work as an adjective, glowing. I liked the rhythm of the two words–ghostly, glowing : 2 syllables, 2 syllables. I had my two descriptive words. Now, I needed the just right word–a noun–for the light of the lamps. I thought, it’s like a halo; it’s a sphere shape because of the way the light is dispersed. So, I checked synonyms for halo and for sphere. And there I saw my perfect word, orb. Hence, ghostly, glowing orbs.

Sentence length.
In the first paragraph, notice the length of sentences and the use of fragments. There are two very long sentences, followed by short fragments and then a very short, three-word sentence. The paragraph concludes with two sentences of average length. The sentence length and use of fragments is deliberate. It reflects the movement on the promenade and the flow of my observations.

Literature connections . . .

1. A picture book:

Fog Cat, a delightful story, one of the picture books on my shelf

Author: Marilyn Helmer
Illustrator: Paul Mombourquette

The beautifully crafted story begins–

Hannah saw her for the first time the summer she came to live at Falls Harbor. The cat came out of the mist one gray August morning when Hannah and her grandfather were beachcombing. She stood on the rocks, a pale, thin wisp of a creature with eyes as green as the sea itself.

Marilyn Helmer weaves a tale of Hannah, her grandfather, and an elusive cat. Through persistence and patience, Hannah slowly wins the confidence of this feral cat, drawing her at last into the home she shares with her Grandfather by the seashore. The day-to-day simple lives of this trio, bound together by love and necessity, is revealed not only by Helmer’s choice verbal depictions but also by Mombourquette’s wonderful illustrations. He matches image to words, capturing the warmth of the home and the rugged misty beauty of the seascape. The story ends with Fog Cat’s unexplained disappearance, but all is not sadness in the end.

2. Carl Sandburg’s poem, “Fog,” is a perfect companion to Fog Cat

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

–Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

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