A Walk in the Fog
Headlands magic was in full effect on Sunday as Jeannene Przyblyski of the San Francisco Bureau of Urban Secrets led a small group of us up and over the hills toward Black Sands Beach. She carried in one hand a glass jar full of fog, i.e. dry ice to which she would occasionally add hot water from a thermos. The theme of our hike (one of nine highly varied walks being offered by Headlands Center for the Arts that afternoon) was fog, and Przyblyski had come prepared with her own "clouds on the ground" in case nature didn't provide us any of its own accord. As you can see from the above picture, she needn't have worried. At various points along the trail Przyblyski shared chapters from the story of fog and folded in tasty bits from history, geography, and pop culture as she went, even pausing for a musical interlude courtesy of Chopin (and her iPod). Finally, from a cliff high above the Pacific she opened her jar, and we watched as the fog returned to the sea. In a moment that existed somewhere outside of time we stood there in a hollowed-out cave of mist, and the water below our feet seemed to glow from its very depths with pale light.
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