Mini-Awe-Polis 4

Welcome to Awe, Nice! where we highlight moments of wonder while working outdoors. We’re on the radio and we’re also on podcast platforms.

My name is Maddy Butcher. I live in southwestern Colorado and I’ve been a journalist for 40 years.  Thus far, we’ve focused entirely on interviews with people working on the land, but soon we’ll have segments from folks who work on the water. Fresh water, salt water. 

I grew up on the coast of Maine and today I wanted to share another mini-moment of awe. Yes, it’s time for Mini-Awe-Polis. Mini Awe Polis is a bundle of small wonders collected in my noggin. Like hay in my jacket pockets. 

A few segments ago, I talked about experiences around tide. This week, I wanted to share another ocean-related thought. Fog.

Fog fosters uncertainty.  It’s funny, even the etymology of fog is foggy. Danish, Old Norse, Old English, Dutch, and German languages all have somewhat similar words which, back in the 16^th century meant things like spray, or damp, moist, or drifting snow storm.

Fog appears when water vapor, that’s water in gas form, condenses. Fog is tiny water droplets hanging in the air.

Fog often happens when there is a difference between the water temperature and the air temperature - like a cold morning on warmer water, or vice versa. 

Fog hardly ever happens if there’s wind. So, if you’re sailing, for instance, and it’s foggy, forget about it. Some describe fog as being in the dark and that’s true. But, you know, when you’re walking in the dark you generally feel the ground beneath you. It’s a surface you can rely on. But if you’re on a boat and in the fog, you might be traveling through water with depths of 200 feet, 20 feet, or two feet. You might be heading towards the shore or away from it. Hard to say.

Fog can completely derail your plans for getting out on the water. Even if you know the area well, even if you have a depth finder, fog will make things difficult, if not impossible.

Unless you’re clamming. It’s good to be a clammer when there’s fog, you just need the tide to come at a decent time of day.

There are buoys and lighthouses and other marine markers to help if you can see. If you can’t see, there are bells as well as fog horns which mostly sound beautiful, low and regular, like a cow calling for her calf but without any urgency.

Horns and bells might drive some people nuts. Certainly fog has that tendency. You can’t rely on fog lifting at any time. It just will when it does. 

I remember painting houses on Harpswell Neck when I was a teenager. We just couldn’t paint if it was foggy (which it often was). You might as well be painting in the rain. When I was working construction on the coast (but not painting) the fog would be so thick you’d need a towel to regularly wipe the moisture off your face.  

I worked at Cook’s Lobster House out on Bailey Island in my 40's. It was, of course, right on the water. I should say almost everything on Bailey Island is right on the water. It’s an island which connects to Orr’s Island (which connects to Great Island and the mainland) by a cribstone bridge. A cribstone bridge is built from massive blocks of granite and water flows through them. Nothing but gravity holds it together. Of course, it’s paved on top but that doesn’t really count. It’s thought to be the only one of its kind in the world. 

Anyway, lots and lots of tourists would come to Cook’s to sit in the booths or outside at tables, eat lobster, and look out the three sides of massive picture windows where they could see lobster boats, fishing boats, sail boats, motor boats coming and going. Except when it was foggy. Then you couldn’t see past the parking lot. 

When will this fog go away?

Your guess is as good as mine. Can I get you another rum and Coke?

 

The poet Colin Sargent wrote:

One year the fog stayed all summer

As if it were a lodger

Picking his teeth after dinner,

Refusing to retire

To his room upstairs

 

Awe, Nice! welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us here. You can find a donate button here.  

Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time.