The weight of morning fog

The fog on Lake Hopatcong has weight. It settles on the water before the sun clears the treeline, and for an hour the lake and the sky are the same soft grey. Nothing moves that does not have to.

We tell guests to walk into it slowly. The body reads the density before the mind does. The breath lengthens on its own, matching the stillness, because there is nothing to hurry toward and nothing arriving.

This is the first lesson of the place, and it is a lesson of the lungs before it is one of the head. Fog does not ask to be understood. It asks only to be breathed.

By the time it lifts, something has been set down. We have watched it happen a hundred mornings, and it still looks like a small kindness the water does for whoever is willing to stand in it.