Our Foggy Advent

Fog at the park earlier this week.

There has been fog in our area these last days—not exactly a common occurrence. I remember my Dad said, when he thought about moving our family from the Los Angeles area to Northern California years ago, that he wanted to find a place that was “above the fog and below the snow.” My folks considered both Placerville and Auburn. I’m glad we ended up where we did.

But there has been fog in Auburn lately—lots of it. I wonder if unusual weather like this is another result of climate change?

I’ve been lucky, though. The little town where I live hasn’t had fog. We’ve had beautiful sunshine and temperatures in the upper 60s. Tomorrow, the forecast is calling for a high temperature of 72 degrees—and twenty degrees or so cooler down the hill, where the fog has settled in.

It’s been strange, driving to work these last days. I forget in the morning that there is fog in Auburn and in the Sacramento Valley. I take Biscuit for a walk in the sunshine, get in the car, head down the hill, and enjoy the drive. Then about five miles from the turnoff for work, I notice that cars heading the other way on the freeway have their lights on. As I head further down the hill, I finally see the fog bank, covering the freeway, greying the sky.

It’s the strangest thing, seeing cars with their lights on when I’ve been moving through brilliant sunshine. I wonder how many of those drivers worry that they will be dealing with fog for the rest of the day. Maybe they’ve been driving for miles and miles, headlights on, peering cautiously ahead, stuck in the grey. And then, just a little higher up the freeway? All of it disappears. They are back in sunshine again.

Back in the sunshine.

There hasn’t been much sunshine in our political situation lately; it’s felt grey out there, with ICE raids and the rollbacks of policies that were trying to address global warming, and the Supreme Court bowing to the president. So many things are making me sad in our country today. It feels like we are in a national fog. But Rob Bell, one of my favorite writers and podcasters, has started calling Trump the “temporary president,” which is true. He’s not there forever; he can’t be. Somehow, that switch in titles lightens things for me.

In a way, it’s the same thing with the fog. It doesn’t last forever. We just have to keep going, keep driving, keep working and moving together—and we’ll get there. The people in charge now, the billionaires who bring the fog, who worship it, who love golden finishes, big ballrooms, awards and prizes? They can’t lasso the sun.

I get to work, and it’s foggy. I come out at the end of my day, and it’s foggy. Then I start the drive home, and it’s cold and hard to see, but then as soon as I get a little further up the freeway, the fog clears, miraculously. Wonderfully. The president and his minions are with us temporarily. If we keep driving together—slowly, carefully—someday we will burst out of the grey, maybe when we least expect it.

Just around the corner— a little further up the road.