Devilishly Disarming

That's the appearance of nebulous, entrancing webworks of mist rising from nature's prankish weather intersections. Our mountains of snow are succumbing to the blandishments of a January thaw, following hard on the phenomenon of a records-breaking cold- and snow-packed December. Fog conditions? a warm air mass coming up against a frigid month's deposit of snow and frozen ground will do the trick.

I grabbed the camera as we set off for our ravine walk, giddy with the prospect of a 6-degree high, loping along the hard-packed trails, enclosed by dense, white fog. Different, certainly different! The mild weather would bring out the semi-hibernators, so we took along a bagful of nuts and dried fruit to be carefully dispensed along the width of the lower bridge-rails.

And took ethereal photographs of floating protoplasm - over the creek, in the dips and hollows of the ravine, among tree boughs and, in fact, everywhere we looked. Did we imagine the sound of church bells faintly pealing on a Monday morning?

This all-enveloping fog, weather forecasters assured us, would lift by mid- to late-afternoon, and we might even see some sun. By the time we set out for the airport, after repeatedly checking online airport departures, the fog appeared to have descended even more decisively; deeply prevalent over field, forest and housing tracts.

As we drove along the highways to our airport destination, the fog appeared to our hopeful perceptions, to have lifted slightly when we approached urbanized areas, then to have descended ever more deeply when we drove past long stretches of open fields. At which time we were barely able to make out faintly perceived outlines of trees and bushes.

At the airport, our son hurried into the airport to scan the departure board. There was his flight to Vancouver, still on time and scheduled to depart. Back to the car for his gear where we parked alongside the terminal. Kissed and hugged and off he went. But we remained, and waited, while other cars, buses and taxis kept arriving. Take-off in this dense fog?

My husband went back into the waiting lounge and there came across an airport employee who informed him that the airport was as good as locked down, despite the frantic arrivals and long line-ups at the check-in desks. And as he waited another few minutes, the flight we were awaiting was finally cancelled. Our son re-scheduled for the following evening.

And we returned home with him. We were delighted with another day of his company and he was in a bit of a dudgeon about his own expectations to return to Vancouver, his home, and his work responsibilities. But it wasn't just Ottawa that was locked in by fog. This was a widespread weather phenomenon that affected a good swath of the country and beyond.

Nature has her own plans and we do the best we can to work around them. Man proposes, nature disposes.