seattle fog

The city's been shrouded in fog lately. Sometimes it's a thin mist, making the skyline indistinct, hiding the mountains. Sometimes it's a dense fog, making driving hazardous. The city shrinks to about a hundred feet in every direction. And then sometimes, like tonight, when I'm taking the bus downtown with a friend I haven't seen in years, there's this rolling patchy fog over the city. Something about it looks dirty. The Space Needle is barely visible--just the top sticking out over a rolling dark cloud. Then we take the Denny Way exit and we're in the fog, and she's talking about how it's so weird. "It's been like this for . . . God, it feels like months now," I say.

We get off and walk to a bar several blocks away. It's fairly quiet and we have a few drinks, chat with the bartender, then walk out into the night. The fog-shrouded city is ours. It's so quiet, so private. We walk up to Gasworks Park. It's a long walk and we sit down on the concrete and stare out at the fog as it conceals the skyline we both fell in love with years ago. We talk for hours until the fog encapsulates us again.