{"id":34505,"date":"2025-11-18T22:01:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T22:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/chasing-fog-the-science-and-spirituality-of-natures-grounded-cloud\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T22:01:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T22:01:00","slug":"chasing-fog-the-science-and-spirituality-of-natures-grounded-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/chasing-fog-the-science-and-spirituality-of-natures-grounded-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Chasing Fog: The Science and Spirituality of Nature\u2019s Grounded Cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chasing<\/a><\/p>\n

One day not long after I moved to New York, I looked up from my writing desk at a shared studio space on the Brooklyn waterfront and saw the Manhattan Bridge halved, only the Brooklyn side remaining, the rest vanished into a sea of fog that had erased Manhattan. <\/p>\n

A sight with the strangeness of a dream, piercing the reality of the late-autumn morning. <\/p>\n

An augury, a living metaphor, a revelation: Every moment of transition is a bridge receding from the firm ground of the known life it into the fog of the possible, promising and menacing in all its opacity. We can only see one step ahead, but the bridge reveals itself firm under our feet as we keep walking, advancing by \u201cthe next right thing,\u201d<\/a> parting the fog to touch the future. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Vanish<\/em> by Maria Popova. (Available as a print<\/a>.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For all its mystical quality, fog has a materiality that embodies the metabolism of this rocky world. It is a conversation between the landscape, its bodies of water, and the wind. Fog forms when the atmosphere cools enough for water droplets to condense into a low-flying cloud. In fact, it is a species of stratus cloud<\/a> that has landed \u2014 an endangered species: Throughout Europe, fog has declined by 50% since 1970 and coastal fog all around the world is vanishing due to climate change, parching ecosystems and leaving landscapes much more vulnerable to wildfires. <\/p>\n

While it is still here, let it come \u2014 sudden as an owl or slow as daybreak, lasting just long for you to feel the breath of the Earth on your cheek, wet and primordial. <\/p>\n

In Chasing Fog<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), writer and photographer Laura Pashby composes a beguiling love letter to \u201cthe wonder and soothing balm of fog,\u201d to \u201cthe irresistible romance of stepping into a cloud at ground level,\u201d to what it teaches us about the visible and the invisible. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Laura Pashby: self-portrait in fog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A childhood like hers \u2014 spent under the sunless leaden skies of the Dartmoor\u2019s wilderness margined with fog, a castle ruin as her playground, the desolate moor as her pool \u2014 shapes a person, shapes how she sees the half-seen world. She writes:<\/p>\n

\n

Fog is my muse: when I am in it, I see things differently. The known becomes unknown, the familiar unfamiliar. Fog disorientates, blurring the edges of everything \u2014 changing landscape, altering colour and softening light\u2026 A foggy morning is rich with mystery and magic, but also with possibility \u2014 the everyday feels otherworldly\u2026 Fog, like salt water, is completely other \u2014 it provides a shock, an escape, a release.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

While fog may seem to hang heavy, it is often vital, not static: dipping, waving, seeping, drifting and flowing. Fog is unpredictable \u2014 it is not soft and benign like cotton wool. In his 1919 essay \u201cDas Unheimliche,\u201d Freud defined the uncanny as something that is both frightening yet familiar: the strangeness of the ordinary. This is exactly the effect that fog can have upon a landscape: when it quickly descends, it disorientates us, obscuring sight, changing familiar surroundings and making the known world seem odd and unsettling. It was this sensory experience that I felt compelled to explore first: the loss of sight as our vision is diminished by fog\u2019s descent; the feeling of a veil being drawn.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photograph by Laura Pashby<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a lovely instance of the unphotographable<\/a>, Pashby paints an enchanting picture in words:<\/p>\n

\n

The fog flows up from the valley and slowly, slowly it fills the town. From my little loft-room study window, I watch it edge along the street like a whisper made visible, gently enveloping house after house, until it reaches mine. The huge beech tree in the garden opposite disappears completely, leaving only the echoing calls of its resident jackdaws \u2014 ghostly in the viscous air. The world beyond my open window fades to white. I want the fog to drift right in, curl cool tendrils around me and encircle me like smoke.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What emerges is the sense that fog is not only a phenomenon but an invitation \u2014 to draw the veil of the world and see it more closely, to see yourself unveiled and saturated with aliveness. (Anything you polish with attention will become a mirror.<\/a>) Pashby writes:<\/p>\n

\n

By paying close attention to fog\u2026 I have tried (imperfectly, truthfully) to bear witness, looking for beauty in a darkening world, for abundance where there so often is none, for clarity through a misted lens.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

If we listen, fog has much to teach us: about the landscape, the weatherscape and about who we are. We are all made of water \u2014 it passes through us and moves on, into the rain, into the river, into the ocean, into the fog. Each of us is fluid, mutable, magic, and we are not distinct from nature, we are<\/em> nature. We are fog.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photograph by Laura Pashby<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Couple Chasing Fog<\/em><\/strong><\/a> with artist, poet, and philosopher Etel Adnan\u2019s slender and splendid book Sea & Fog<\/em><\/a>, then revisit the Cloud Appreciation Society\u2019s delightful illustrated field guide to the science and wonder of clouds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

donating = loving<\/h3>\n

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings<\/em><\/a> for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant \u2014 a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation<\/a>. Your support makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

\n

newsletter<\/h3>\n

The Marginalian<\/em> has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week\u2019s most inspiring reading. Here\u2019s what to expect<\/a>. Like? Sign up.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One day not long after I moved to New York, I looked up from my writing desk at a shared studio space on the Brooklyn waterfront and saw the Manhattan Bridge halved, only the Brooklyn side remaining, the rest vanished into a sea of fog that had erased Manhattan. A sight with the strangeness of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 17:18:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}