Befriending the Unseen

Reflections from a fog-draped morning.

The forest was quieter than usual this morning. In every direction, fog hung thick between the trunks, softening every sharp edge, swallowing the horizon until the world ended just a few steps ahead. My boots sank into the muddy path and the soft squish of wet earth and a crow’s caw were the only sounds around me.

Snow does it too, but fog muffles differently. It blurs the distance, gathers the woods close, and keeps their sounds suspended like a fragile bubble of air around me. It felt as though I was walking not through the forest I know, but through its more mysterious sibling: a misty, parallel universe where time felt slower.

I waded on, treading fog like water, spotting mushrooms pushing through moss and mulch, and spiderwebs twinkling with dew. Somewhere in the distance, a branch creaked. A single drop fell from the canopy, the sound so sharp in the hush it could’ve been the forest speaking back to me.

There’s a strange kind of intimacy in mornings like this. The mist feels like a gentle hug, yet it also obscures what lies ahead, it’s holding me close and unsettling me all at once. Old stories say fog blurs the line between worlds, that wandering souls drift within it. Maybe that’s why it always feels as though something unseen walks beside me, and sometimes, within me too.

As I walked on, I passed firs bent from recent storms, their trunks creaking against one another. The ground was carpeted in orange needles. I followed the path until it curved left and opened into a meadow: another one of nature’s portals framed by arching shrubs. Things unknown hid behind the curtain of mist, but I stepped through anyway. The last yarrow peeked out between bowed grasses, holding on before finally going to seed. Wild boars had been busy, rooting through the softened earth in search of mushrooms and roots.

I stopped and listened. Beneath the stillness, there was always movement. A rustle, a creak, the pulse of the land beating beneath my feet. The fog drifted, curling around my feet like a cat before pooling again in the valley. The path faded into nothing ahead, but I kept walking. I knew the way by heart.

Maybe that’s what fog is for: to remind me that I rarely see that far ahead, yet I must go on anyway. That mystery isn’t a threat, but a quiet companion I need to get to know slowly. A soft unknowing that teaches me to trust.

When the wind shifted, I caught a glimpse of the field’s far edge. Just a pale shimmer through the grey revealing the wooden gate leading back to my garden. The crow called again, closer this time, as if to say the world was still here, waiting behind the veil.

I breathed in the damp air, heavy with rain and decay, and walked home through the fog while the world around me was half-erased, comforted by the thought that even when I can’t see the way clearly, it’s still worth it to keep going.

See you where the wild things are,

🍂 Allie