This morning I looked out the windows to see the neighborhood covered with a thin veil of fog. Until my first trip to San Francisco last month, I thought I knew what real fog looks like.
I don't know fog.
Downtown Silver Spring viewed from the Silver Spring Metro platform, 8:33 am, September 22, 2009.
As much as I have long loved Carl Sandburg's poem, I never could quite equate his vision of this naturally occuring climatic event with what I have always seen:
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Carl Sandburg
Chicago Poems (1916) "Fog"
One day while in San Francisco I was coming out of the Safeway at 2020 Market Street (can't get away from Safeway!) when I was stopped dead in my tracks. Looking south-west towards Mount Sutro I saw this veritable blanket of fog coming over the top of the 200 ft. rise and flowing down its western side.
Fog pouring down western face of Mount Sutro, San Francisco, 6:39 pm, August 25, 2009.
The first thing I thought of upon seeing this spectacle was the scene in the 1996 film Independence Day when the alien spaceship arrives over New York City and is revealed coming out of an ominous-looking cloud.
The second thing I thought of was that this fog bank was indeed advancing slowly as a cat's feet would...ready to pounce on an unsuspecting prey...just the way Sandburg described it.
I suspect that Sandburg was thinking about Chicago fog since he was living there at the time he penned his poem, but who knows? Either way, it was a nice way to start a dreary day with thoughts of San Francisco and Carl Sandburg.
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