AS THE FOG ROLLS IN (MEMORIES OF A CHILD)

Living on what was then remote Olympic Peninsula, only a quarter of a mile from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where some of my earliest memories included the wispy fog that rolled gently and silently through the stands of second growth fir and alder, drifting across the cleared fields below the house.  I would watch it as it traveled up the road to the lower field and wrap itself around the barn where we hand milked the three cows each evening. 

Sometimes, if the cows didn’t come home by milking time, I would have to try and find them.  I would walk, skip or run to the lower field and if they weren’t there, the search would begin in earnest….. OK, maybe not in earnest, because I could find almost anything to distract me.  Anything from chasing after King, my half great Dane, half black Lab, to finding a slim alder tree to shinny up or maybe a red ant nest that I’d poke with a stick and watch the ants move around.  There may even been a slime covered pond or marsh that had frog eggs clinging to the weeds or tadpoles swimming around, or maybe even the wheel from an old train that the logging companies lost or left behind when they fell the virgin Doug Fir earlier in the century.  The distractions were numerous, and anyone or all of them at once would pull me to explore and play around. 

I’d be lost in whatever I was doing until I would hear a voice that carried in the fog yelling, “Come boss, come boss then, Jamie, Jamie,” and I knew that it was time to find the cows and head for home.  Usually it wasn’t that hard to find them, for somehow they were always ahead of me on the trail through the scrub Alder and blackberry bushes, leaving behind steaming pies for me to step around.  But wait.  Some of the cow pies from yesterday and the day before had neat little bugs crawling around in them, leaving little holes.  Oops, I head mom again yelling for me.  Her voice above even that of dad was the one that could reach me all the way to the creek that was down in a canyon covered with devil’s club and lined with tall Doug fir and Cedar trees with a smattering of Alder.

I would look up from my investigations of the natural world around me and find myself enveloped in the sea of fog that had gotten thicker while my investigative procrastination’s had delayed me from my appointed task.  Off I would go, hurrying along the deer and cow trails with big black ‘King’ ahead of me until he was distracted.  Now, I don’t know if I got my aptitude for distractions from him, or he got his from me.  In any case one or the other of us would stop and only after our curiosity was satisfied or prompted by another yell from the house would we move on.

Arriving back at the barn, the cows could be found with their head in the stalls, munching oats and hay where I only had to close the 2×4 headlock (now what were they called?) against their neck, holding them in place until I was finished milking them.  I did have to use kickers on the two mean ones, but not old Daisy, for she was the kindest jersey any 8 y/o ever could milk.  After King got his fair share direct from the stream I’d shoot at him, I would open the mangers, carry and struggle the two buckets of milk to the back porch where the milk separator was. 

But wait, the fog had gotten so thick while I milked that I could barely see the house, let alone the pig pen where some of the milk had to go to feed the pigs.   Out of the fog, I’d see a figure with a hickory shirt open with a couple of buttons showing black wool underwear under it, shagged off overalls held up by two inch wide suspenders and a wide grin reaching to take the buckets from me.  Off my Dad, and I’d go to slop the pigs and take the rest of the milk back to the house.

By then, the fog had traveled up the county road to cover highway 9A (now called 112) and come to rest against the Olympic Mountains.  As we walked back to the house, our voices would have a muffled sound to them and the air had a moist crispness to it as it filled my lungs.  Once inside the house, the smell of supper and the family noise would break the enchantment of the evening.  But thinking back on it now, it seemed that the fog brought the family closer as the sights and sounds from the world around us would be cut off.

Whenever I’m now sailing through the fog, I’m reminded of what used to be, and I feel the comfort of the fog as one would an old sweater you’ve had for years.  I look forward to sailing through it (as long as I have working radar) and feeling its wispy embrace.