Enveloping Fog!

The fog during the summer months lays thick along the coast of central California. It is the stuff of literary legend. Twain's comment, " the coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco" is the most often quoted by guidebooks that seek to instruct the casual summer weekend visitor on what to wear when!  The freezing blasts leave most unprepared as they "do" San Francisco for the day.  The merchants of schlock peddle poorly made fleece windbreakers with SAN FRANCISCO printed across the front, contrasting the worst in seasonal bright colors with black script, to the suffering fools on the route of tourist traps which we allow to infest our wharf area's.

In summer only the hardiest of souls brave the cold blasts of thick gray clouds to walk the dog.  It is the definition of dreaded chore to do so.  The childhoods of generations of San Franciscan's have many cultural disconnects from the rest of the United States of America, some due to the limitations imposed upon our choices due to the compact nature of our densely built city, others stem from needed restrictions which are common enough in urban area's.  The one most unique to our tiny city is that though municipal firework displays are mounted each year to celebrate the Glorious 4th the actual viewing of the display of patriotic fevor is limited to those few souls who are able to find a parking space near the water's edge.  In an annual  folly worthy of the best Kafka story the city father's mount wonderful  firework displays that are seen by nearly no one in San Francisco and mostly by the residents of Oakland and Marin.  The moment marks the revolution chiefly in continual booms and an orange glow originating way above the clouds. Still the fog has its magic.  One magical trick the fog has for me is that when flying either home or away from San Francisco we always pass over the Mt. Sutro Tower and its top third is the sole recognizable landmark in a sea of white cloud.  I know that my house and gardens are just below and a bit to the left. Makes me fell rather special.

The billowing wisps are tailor made for twilight games of hide and seek. In fact it's very possible to hide out in the open if one steps away just far enough.  The resulting giggling will always give the player away. Twilight, that lovely faded light, lasts from morning until nightfall, making the whole day one singular white grey period with no shadows to mark the flight of the sun's journey.  Sundials are not much used in San Francisco gardens and time passes very silently.  The savvy gardener will plant windblocks and privacy screens into the domestic landscape, so it is very possible to spend hours reading on a bench in a sheltered garden nook.  On the mountainsides the fog creeps quietly over the woodlands of the densely forested valleys and deep canyons of the Crystal Springs Watershed and everything, people, gardens, flower, houses, are held in a Brig-a-doon sort of stasis wherever the coastal fog holds court during the summer. The fog rolls out and it is still 1962, the slumber induced by the enveloping clouds is that deep, the magic of it is that it causes time to stand still.    That magic disappears in late August early September when the remembered bright lights of early June are replaced by the shadows of fall amid crystal clear days.  A week or two of warmth before the crispness of true fall.  It is a time of high frolic that is gives meaning to the word JOY!  I recommend it highly.