Disappearing Into the Mist

It was a misty morning that started what would be a sort of gray, overcast, and rainy day. But the big rain system moved around us for a while before it got here. So in the morning, I saw the mist, and you know how I am: out I went, with camera.

I walked over and photographed five of my favorite trees a bit down the road. Then I headed for Tow Hill. As I got there, I saw the mist was leaving. Oh, darn. Disappointment. But then I looked up the hill. Near the top, the mist seemed heavier. Up the hill I went to find out.

Well, as I walked, the mist came back again in full force. And by the time I came back DOWN Tow Hill, this was the scene. The road ahead of me was obscured. The world as I knew it was disappearing into the magical world of the mist.

I took a bunch of photos, as you might imagine, and this is one of the mistiest. I love mist and fog. They transform the scenes we see every day, make them into something mysterious, unknown, spooky. What could be waiting around that corner; or down that road? Things SOUND different, SMELL different, in the fog. A fog is a damper. I walked, quietly, in the mist. I waited for the light to come.

I can see those mailboxes there on the left, but not the houses down below. And in front of that regular mailbox is a white plastic mailbox that says Centre Daily Times, which is our local newspaper. When I first moved out here 20 years ago, I was a subscriber too. Somewhere along the line, I stopped.

I read last year that our local newspaper is moving from daily delivery by carriers on foot or in cars to mail delivery. There are reasons for this; good ones, I'm sure. Many smaller newspapers are struggling to make it work, financially. The business models are changing; how to get people to PAY for news, when they can read so much of it online for free?

As a youngster, I wrote for newspapers - The Daily Collegian and the Lewistown Sentinel - for a bit. I started Penn State as a journalism major; yes, I almost became a journalist by trade, but it just didn't suit me for many reasons, although WRITING is the one thing I've always known I wanted to do with my life. (How to do it and make money at it, now that's the big question for ALL writers.) So I wish them well.

My big sister Barb wouldn't put up with it, though. She lived in Marysville, across the river from Harrisburg. She was WAITING for her newspaper when it was delivered around 4 or 5 in the morning. She read it cover to cover before she started her day. She and my dad were big consumers of newspapers, sharing and trading them back and forth: the Harrisburg Patriot-News, the Juniata Sentinel, the Lewistown Sentinel.

And of course, my mother, she with her endless scrap books. . . . Late at night, if you stumbled into her kitchen while she was waiting up for Dad to come home from the railroad, smelling of creosote and cold steel, you'd find her "making snibbles" (cutting out articles) about things of interest, people she knew. 

Trying to save the things that mattered, before they disappeared.

Our soundtrack song is INXS, with Disappear.