Into the Fog

"Mrs. Kaseorg, Can you see the road?"
"No."
"How do you know where to drive?"
"I am making educated guesses."
"When will you know if you guess wrong?"
"When we are hurtling off the edge of the mountain. I suggest you practice 'tuck and roll'."

The fog gave new meaning to "so thick you could cut it with a knife." I would have turned around but I could not see to either side of the steep, winding road climbing to the tallest ski mountain in NC. I was going 5 miles an hour, at times less, and straining to see the center line of the road. If I kept just a few inches to the right of that, I hoped (prayed) that we would make it to the top. I was bringing Asherel and her friends Alex and Ben to snowboard. It was spooky in that ghostly, milky white. How on earth could we ski in this? Had we just driven three hours for nothing? Well, not for nothing. We had driven three hours to endanger life and limb. The adrenalin rush driving in the fog was more than I ever got skiing.

Finally we reached the parking lot. We could not see the mountain, the lodge , or anything  except fog and the few people within inches of us gliding silently by. I had never tried to ski in fog. I don't have much experience with this sport. And I was responsible for 3 young souls.
"Excuse me?" I asked a skier returning to his car, materializing like a specter from the gloom, "Can you ski in this stuff?"
"It's not easy," he said, "You have to go slow."

Surprisingly the parking lot was mobbed. All these people couldn't be wrong, could they? So we got our equipment and lift tickets and hustled Ben off to his lesson for his first snowboard experience. I knew the kids would not leave the bunny slope so they were in little danger. But at this point, the bunny slope was not fun for me so I headed to find a chair lift. The fog was so thick that I couldn't see chairlifts, or any slopes. but eventually I asked enough people to steer me to the right place, and climbed on the chairlift taking me to a slope I was told was for beginners, but was shrouded completely in the cloud dancing on earth.

It was eerily silent on the chair lift, sound muffled by the fog. Skiers right below me would glide into view and then fade away into whiteness. Visible life was only a few hundred feet in any direction. The rest of the world could have been Mars. It was very disconcerting, yet oddly peaceful having that limited vision, all visual choices narrowed to the world immediately around me. It is not often in life that so much of the madness around you is suddenly shut off, obliterated.

I rode the quiet chairlift through the cloud and thought of God. They say when you die, you see a long white tunnel with light at the end. All around you is whiteness. Near-death survivors speak very similarly of this sensation. There is a little too much going on in my life right now. Maybe always....School, science olympiad in 2 weeks, fixing our projects so we won't be humiliated, a painting for Matt's wedding to finish, a painting of a pitbull to start for Hollow Creek Farm, the rehearsal dinner to plan, the travel and tux and dress arrangements to be made for the wedding, the dogs and upcoming agility trial, the elderly grandma that should not be living alone but is still fighting any efforts to convince her otherwise, the constant struggle to be what God wants me to be.....It all clamors and bumps against me.

But here, all alone on a chairlift in the milky fog, quietly going up up up into the whiteness, it was all shrouded, quieted, momentarily gone.  I would not have asked for fog had God been sending out a request form, but I realized that perhaps fog is exactly what I needed that day.

The fog had dissipated on the road up the mountain, and our drive down was easy and uneventful. The glorious vistas that we had not seen on the harrowing drive up were revealed. Mountains and mountains in receding shades of blue filled the horizon. The kids chattered away, bursting with the success of their snowboarding. I said little, wrapped in the memory of the peaceful whiteness.

Isaiah 44:
²² I have swept away your offenses like a cloud,
   your sins like the morning mist.
Return to me,
   for I have redeemed you.”  ²³ Sing for joy, you heavens, for the LORD has done this;
   shout aloud, you earth beneath.
Burst into song, you mountains,
   you forests and all your trees,
for the LORD has redeemed Jacob,
   he displays his glory in Israel.