Have you ever been amazed at how like passion and love the sensual and fleeting embrace of fog is>? If so, you are our kind of reader, so come along!
We were told on last Friday by Caltrans that the light at Jack Peters Creek Bridge would be pulled sometime this week, marking the first time in two years we could drive through there without that infernal red light wait!
. We didn’t like that. We wanted to know an exact day. So we engaged in espionage. On Monday we went down and found a man working on touching up the bridge railing (odd it needed touching up so soon!) and he assured us Wednesday. We liked that better. We like news tips from the unnamed construciton guy. Defy the man and get the news from the real people! Well we drove down on Wednesday and no luck. My guy was nowhere to be seen. Some other guy, from some other crew was repainting something on the curb! Not good. Almost everything had been cleared out but no dice Wednesday. We are not going to make any more predictions, other than the official “this week” from Manny Machado Two more days at most!
On our way down, we assembled a photo story. We took the dogs to Noyo Beach, where there was no fog but it came in so fast. It covered the road, then fled up high and when we got to the bridge, it was gone! Ameno-sagiri the Japanese god of fog, can defeat Apollo and Posideon simultaneously with her shape-shifting ways. In Celtic mythology, the Féth fíada could become fog, shroud Picts and Celts and swallow the Romans.
When we arrived at Noyo Beach, fog was not possibile, unless you looked at that horizonFog is actually something of a cloud that fears heights. After falling to earth, the cloud picks up bits of salt from the sea and water sticks those. Here the wind drives the fog east, while this brave crew heads westSoon, they were swallowed and we could see the clear day at the beach was over- on to Mendo to check the bridge light!The fog came faster than we could walk but the pelicans, gullls and one goose didnt seem worriedThese pelicans have procrastinated their trip south. The fog surrounds the birds, seemingly unseenThe fog seems to have left a hole in heaven when she went to the ground. Fog differs from mist, which is just water blowing up and turning to vapor, not a cloud coming down from heavenWe tried to escape but it devoured the bridge before we could cross itThese gentlemen enjoyed the show as much as the birds. The thickness of a fog layer is largely determined by the altitude of the inversion boundary, which in coastal or oceanic locales is also the top of the marine layer, above which the air mass is warmer and drier. The inversion boundary varies its altitude primarily in response to the weight of the air above it, which is measured in terms of atmospheric pressure. The marine layer, and any fog-bank it may contain, will be “squashed” when the pressure is high and conversely may expand upwards when the pressure above it is lowering. Conifers are so dominant on the Coast partly because they can drink fog. Redwoods can;t get as tall where there is no fog, as pulling water up from roots that high challenges the laws of physics. Redwood forests in California receive approximately 30–40% of their moisture from coastal fog by way of fog drip. We are at Jughandle on our way to the light.Carl Sandburg wrote a famous poem comparing fog to a cat:
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on. In 1776, General George Washington, losing the battle of Long Island badly, knew his chance to escape was the fog. Washington and his command staff escaped, while the troops were captured. The officers would have faced hanging as traitors to the king, but lived to fight another day and win by knowing how to use the weather.We outran the fog! We got to Big River Beach and it was clear again. Jake has the coolest van.But she followed us! The fog was back!We played the dogs in the fog, but then it ran back out to sea while we watched.How is it possible the fog can come east with a passion and turn around and go back to the horizon? None of my books on fog explain this, its supposed to travel on wind with sea foam. She didn’t come back but as darkness fell at 5 p.m!! we knew there was no hope for our well-sourced prophecy on the light being gone on WednesdayWe did get to enjoy a beautiful display of Christmas at the patriotic house just south of Green Acres, and this from our neighbors, whose son Dean likes to watch from inside as passerbys enjoy the inflatable Christmas cheer!
Frank Hartzell has spent his lifetime as a curious anthropologist in a reporter's fedora. His first news job was chasing news on the streets of Houston with high school buddy and photographer James Mason, back in 1986. Then Frank graduated from Humboldt State and went to Great Gridley as a reporter, where he bonded with 1000 people and told about 3000 of their stories. In Marysville at the Appeal Democrat, the sheltered Frank got to see both the chilling depths and amazing heights of humanity. From there, he worked at the Sacramento Bee covering Yuba-Sutter and then owned the Business Journal in Yuba City, which sold 5000 subscriptions to a free newspaper. Frank then got a prestigious Kiplinger Investigative Reporting fellowship and was city editor of the Newark Ohio, Advocate and then came back to California for 4 years as managing editor of the Napa Valley Register before working as a Dominican University professor, then coming to Fort Bragg to be with his aging mom, Betty Lou Hartzell, and working for the Fort Bragg Advocate News. Frank paid the bills during that decade + with a successful book business. He has worked for over 50 publications as a freelance writer, including the Mendocino Voice and Anderson Valley Advertiser, along with construction and engineering publications. He has had the thrill of learning every day while writing. Frank is now living his dream running MendocinoCoast.News with wife, Linda Hartzell, and web developer, Marty McGee, reporting from Fort Bragg, California.
