Pelicans in Golden Gate Fog

When I was a little girl, The Hound of the Baskervilles lured me into the bogs and vapors of Devon. It bewitched me into loving the fog … and long days of sopping low light.

When we lived in Seattle, the fog and mist traveled in stealth, like Sandburg’s cat feet and silent haunches. But, it carried across Puget Sound a savage and damp cold. It truly seemed like the fog from which the coal-black hounds and smoldering eyes would burst.

In California’s Central Valley, the tule fog was our white-knuckle, dripping-sweat type of fog … when we’d get caught late at night on that long leg between the Grapevine and San Francisco.

My true beloved has always been San Francisco fog, now also known as Karl. There are few phenomena as spectacular as watching advection fog sweep over the Golden Gate so quickly that skies of celeste blue turn almost zinc before you can reach in your camera bag. It seems a gentler fog, despite the gales alongside. It tumbles and fades, and dissolves into a specter before reforming again in a blanket of brume.

I love the way fog texturizes the landscape. It renders perfect the pterodactyl silhouettes of pelicans, and amplifies the calls of migrating terns. It’s my remedy and antidote, a way to get through summer without summer.