A Walker in the Suburbs

Out this morning early to move one car and help scrape another, I skittered over the icy driveway and marveled at the cold fog that envelops our neighborhood. It looks like frozen fog to me, but then I wondered, is there such a thing?

There is, I learned, but we don’t have it this morning. Frozen fog appears only in very cold conditions (minus 40 degrees) or in very rare ones (with 100 percent humidity and very quick freezing). I also learned that in the western United States early settlers called this ice fog pogonip, a variation of the Shosone word for cloud.

I will keep calling it frozen fog, though. I like the alliteration — and the crow-cawing loneliness of the scene outside my window. I am also most grateful that I don’t have to go out in it this morning. Frozen fog is best viewed from inside.

Photo from an earlier, snowier winter.

Wet windy weather is moving in today, weather more in keeping with the season. So in honor of balmy blue November skies, of leaf-scented raking days, of shorts in winter, here is photo of skating in short sleeves, a celebration of summer in fall.

A cloudy morning grants permission. Not that one needs it, of course. We are all grownups here (well, almost). We go out or stay in as we are moved to do.

Still, a cloudy morning says, no need to venture out just yet. You will miss nothing by sitting here just a moment longer with the laptop, tapping a few more words onto the screen, reading another passage, closing the book and pondering a phrase.

A cloudy morning diffuses the light. No rays blare from the east. No shadows fall. The clouds are democratic; they spread light evenly across the land.

There is something in the work-worn soul that craves a cloudy Friday morning. It is a long sigh, a pause, a resting place.

As I listen to the rain outside this morning I think about those white-noise machines of rain sounds, how soothing they are. Perhaps nothing is as relaxing as the sound of rain — unless it is rain you soon have to go out and brave.

It is the vicarious rain, then, the rain we listen to and watch, that makes us feel calm. It is the contrast between what we hear happening outside and what we know to be true inside — the comfortable, dry room; the tea just brewed, a good book at the ready. No need for boots, an umbrella or raincoat.

I’m almost convincing myself. Before it’s too late, I must finish this post, gulp down my tea, put down the book. It’s morning. It’s raining. It’s time to leave.

Not quite enough rain to need a canoe. But these days you never know.

Waking up to another rainy day this morning, these lines of Robert Frost’s come to mind:

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain — and back in rain.
I have outrun the furthest city light.

It’s a dark poem for a gray day.

Wondering if I’ve overlooked the sun or if we really have had an especially rainy, gloomy September, I consulted the Capital Weather Gang. One of their articles tells me that it’s been one of the soggiest, cloudiest Septembers on record — only four days with more than 50-percent sun. And that article was written September 21.

It reminds me of weather forecasts for England and Ireland when I’ve visited there. “It will be cloudy, with sunny intervals.” An interval lasting, oh, about ten minutes or so.

This weather is a test of our mettle, of our ability to keep a sunny state of mind while daily being deluged with the opposite.

There is a special quality to the day that has been cloudy and ends with a last-minute parting of the clouds. The sun, of course, is low in the sky, and so those first rays are a bit disorienting.

Is it just selective memory, or does the sun set more grandly, more expansively on those days? It makes sense that it might. Banks of just-parted clouds pile in heaps on the horizon and add drama to the sun’s steady slipping.

And on the ground, people who have been inside all day rush out to walk before darkness falls. The streets that were clammy and silent are suddenly peopled again. There is an unusual briskness at day’s end. And a hopefulness for the morrow.