Assignment:
The timing of this is perfect. Normally at this time of year, we are in the doldrums of winter, and have days and sometimes weeks of fog, drizzle, bone piercing dampness, and depression. It would have been easy to wander about the foggy valley and find some “fog/mist” to illuminate and submit for this week.
But the weather this week? This week? Endless days of clear blue skies, salubrious summer landscapes, birds chirping like spring, and flip-flops clapping along the dappled quay. So fog, or even mist, is just a diffuse, muggy easily forgotten memory. I get all of the breaks sometimes. What to do?
One thought, fog can be more than just a physical barrier, there is metaphorical fog as well. I have had brain fog. Where you live a life inside a big glass jar, where reality is just outside the glass, but you can’t quite reach it. It is like when in a dream where you are reaching for something good, but you cannot somehow grasp it. Very much like what I am trying to achieve here with this assignment.
Well as luck would have it. On Friday, Linda wanted to “get out of College Place”. So we threw some snacks into the Escape, and escaped for an overnighter way up to Walker Pit on the Snake river. And guess what? In the morning I woke up to misty mountains! Okay, so its misty bluffs. So here is your fog/mist mister:
But wait, there is more! There might indeed be mystery and wonder in stepping off of a ladder and imprinting the sole of your boot into the face of the moon. But here is a real mystery. Do you see it?
Here, let me help you:
Please Niel, help me with this. This, this fills me with wonder. How does this happen? What on Earth? How does a dental flosser end up on a rail road track literally in the middle of no where? I mean the last person of note that passed by these bluffs was Meriwether Lewis. So who would be concerned about dental health here? Not Sacagawea, she had her hands full with a whole group adventurers that smelled bad, and a nursing baby, (She is the true Mother of the West). I do find some spent shotgun shells scattered about so duck hunters have been here, but I find it hard to believe that they would be so concerned about caries, that they would stuff plakers in with their number 7 1/2’s.
NASA, you put a man on the moon, please this can’t be rocket science, explain this.
A conductor, fitting in his hygiene between stops? Perhaps a four-legged friend out for a walk, who brought his newest treasure along but had to forsake it for a good stick? A litterbug crossing the tracks with his arm hanging out the open window, on his way to pick up his date?