Atmospherics

 

One morning's excursion to Halibut Point this week began with the landscape shrouded in fog. The interplay of earth, air, and water promised eerie possibilities.

Some vistas seemed to lose their tops and bottoms in the shroud. The mist muted colors into its own grayness, the occasional warm tones like glowing embers.

While the rising sun began to clarify the sky overhead the air below held its heavy vapors in the hollow of the quarry. Mysterious patterns emerged and subsided at the watery edge.

The quarry seemed filled with mercury, or silvered like a mirror.

Was it the light, the air, or a damp film on the surfaces themselves that saturated the colors? The effect sharpened, waned, sharpened again as the sun dueled with the fog.

Blue skies or a light breeze would have spoiled the scene. An envelope of pale stillness perfected it.