Fog Spirits and Tree Cookies

“Faith is like radar that sees through the fog – the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see. “

Corrie ten Boom

It was mild for January. Misty.  50 degrees warmer than a week earlier. Fog greeted us in the early morning and enveloped us by mid-afternoon.

Rambling along a backroad, taking it slow, I opted to turn left instead of right. I was so close to the Morton Arboretum that I decided, then and there, to go for a visit. It had been so long since I spent time at my favorite outdoor museum. I cut through the fog and dove into the “soup” for a few laps around the grounds.

I drove the west side first, biding my time, wending around the alternate route past Lake Marmo. There, I spotted a bird of prey surveying the grounds.

I parked the car and wandered over to the Visitor’s Center to check out the gift shop and then, my real reason for the stop, to indulge in a cup of hot white chocolate! White chocolate on a soupy day – what more could one want? Tom was nearby and ended up joining me. On the way to refreshments my eye caught this half eaten tree cookie.

There is usually an engaging, hand-crafted arrangement near the entry of the Visitor Center, assembled with plant material found on the grounds of the Arb. This unique arrangement caught my eye and whet my appetite to fashion an arrangement to soon.

Click onto the photo for a better view.

Refreshed and renewed, my Antler Man homeward-bound, I opted to drive around the east side of the Arboretum, even as the fog thickened from soup to stew and blurred the horizon.

I could still see the shapes of trees, but, they took on a mysterious manner with distorted apparitions – fog spirits – as far as the eye could see in a muffled atmosphere that rejuvenated me as I took the long way home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In the Soup!

Here on the Cutoff, and through a great portion of the midwest, we woke to heavy fog. The eerie aura was both exciting and dangerous, especially for those out driving, catching the school bus, or attempting to get from here to there for Thanksgiving with visibility less that a quarter of a mile. We were, as the saying goes, in the soup! It was noon before the fog burned off, though we could see the sun shining throughout the haze of our day.

As I dusted and arranged things in our dining room for Thanksgiving,  I felt I was being observed. Indeed, I was. The deer were lounging just outside the windows, looking in at me. This one turned away, rather indignantly, when I noticed her. 

This afternoon, as I write with the sun streaming through the windows, a pumpkin pie, laced with chipotle, is cooling. A pan of shortbread is about to go into the oven. While it is baking, I think I’ll read a bit from “The Madonnas of Leningrad” before peeling the sweet potatoes for tomorrow’s feast.

An acorn squash sits on the counter, waiting to be halved, baked, then adorned with a bit of cranberry relish, brown sugar, and marmalade; another new recipe that will round out the leftovers for tonight’s supper.

It is quiet within and peaceful without. I am reminded me that I have a great deal to be thankful for. Our house is warm and dry, our electricity is on, bombs are not hurling towards us, the earth is not quaking under our feet. It was a great U. S. president, Abraham Lincoln, who first declared a national day of Thanksgiving in the midst of the Civil War, reminding us then, reminding us now, that we have much to be thankful for.

On another note, I wonder if this gobbler failed to get the email that warned turkeys against high visibility in November!

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Consolation

Mist clogs the sunshine.

Smoky dwarf houses

Hem me round everywhere;

A vague dejection

Weighs down my soul.

Yet, while I languish,

Everywhere countless

Prospects unroll themselves,

And countless beings

Pass countless moods.

From Consolation by Matthew Arnold

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