A Foggy Land of Enchantment

Our Sibling Assignment for this week is Fog, as posed to us by Raymond Pert.

IEG's poetry post is here, and RP's post will be here.

Last week, for a brief moment, I was transported to a foggy land of enchantment.

PKR and I were driving home from Coeur d'Alene along Interstate 90, and as we passed the Rose Lake junction, we could tell there was a full moon.

We kept catching glimpses of it as the road turned.

Then, as the road straightened out and we entered the Cataldo Slough area, our world transformed.

We were transported into a land of dense areas of fog near the ground, but clear sky above with the full moon casting a silvery glow on the fog below.

As the fog permeated our car, the damp, organic, moistness of the fog invaded my nostrils. It was almost like being in the fog at the ocean, but the smell was full of more earthy smells, like the slough had condensed and invaded the car for a brief moment.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a slough is like a bog or a swamp. It is a marshy, reedy pool of backwater full of grassy plants and covers either side of Interstate 90 from just past the Rose Lake junction to the sighting of the Cataldo Mission.

And the Old Mission also was a character in this enchanted world we entered. Perched high on her hill, a beacon of light for travelers heading into the Silver Valley from the west, her grassy slope was covered with a thick cloud of silvery white as we drove by.

Once past the mission, the moon left us, and we were enveloped in an ordinary fog once again, and continued on our way past Cataldo, and Kingston, Pinehurst and Smelterville, until we reached out destination of Kellogg and home.

But that brief moment of silvery enchantment there on the Cataldo flats will never leave me.