As I drove home on the highway a few nights ago, I observed the fog.
I had no choice: I had to pay complete attention even on the parts of the highway that run dead straight for miles at a stretch.
Some people joke that one can read a book while driving on these highways on the flatland that is central Illinois. I, myself, laugh every time I see the curve that is brightly marked on I-57 heading back south from Chicago. “Pay attention! The road does not run straight here!” I chuckle. Having lived in valleys where roads follow the curves of mountains, I still marvel at the straight lines of the Midwest.
That night, though, I could see only a few yards ahead of me, and the familiar was unrecognizable.
At one point, an oversized tree trunk seemed to appear in the median of the highway, its immense girth topped by branches reaching out in two directions. As I got closer, it transformed into a concrete beam holding up an overpass, an overpass that became visible only briefly just as I drove under it.
A little later, an orange haze appeared in the sky ahead of me. It glowed, and I wondered, could those be the city lights reflecting off of the fog? After all, I should have been nearly home. Just as I accepted the city lights as a reasonable explanation, the orange glowed more brightly and seemed to get closer. Beginning to feel as though I was in a sci-fi movie, I watched the glow slowly develop a defined shape, a rectangle. It was the sign announcing my exit, a regular green highway sign lit by amber lights. On an otherwise woefully boring highway, that sign turned into a mysterious, even alien presence when filtered through the fog.
I have been thinking about the fog since then, about how it enclosed me in just what was right there. When I moved through it, it demanded complete attention to every segment of highway, every foot of air through which I moved. The fog generated an unexpected clarity even as it obscured the world around me.
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