Fog and ground stars
Strange phenomena of Appalachia
On spring mornings, I would awake to a dark, gray day with fog that sat loosely all over the ground. I would walk to the bus stop, peering through the fog at neighbors’ houses, which suddenly looked sinister. Of course, being a teenager, I refused to go to the bus stop nearest to my house. I had to walk across town to the bus stop that had the most friends at it. By the time I got there I would be cold and wet, with my hair plastered to my head. I would join a crew of other cold and wet kids, hoping someone had some warming humor going in the morning.
At school, we would peer out the windows to see if the fog was still around. In spring, it left before noon, unless an all-day rain was settling in. In winter, it would be worse. We would go to school in the dark and come home in twilight. Any fog besides that was a good thing, because much of the time it was too cold to fog. Summer fogs are wonderful. They appear brightly in the morning and disappear once the sun’s rays cross the mountain. Spring fogs push life back into the landscape — making sure water can find every small moss perched up in a tree and every sprouted seed in the clogged drainpipe.
But, of all of them, I loved autumn fogs best. They symbolized the new year beginning. The new year was the school year, and it seemed much more of a cleft than…
