Not so foggy...

I’m honestly not feeling very profound this week, so I thought I’d just share an insight, or perhaps it’s more of a reminder of something we all know, from an experience I had this weekend.

First, a little background: I live in the Bay Area, which is famous for its microclimates. That is, the weather can be very different just a few miles away than it is where you are. Thus the concept of the “sunny neighborhood”, as opposed to a cloudy or foggy or windy one, which completely blew my mind when I first moved here. The fog, when it’s in, tends to leave by noon and come in again in the late afternoon. But this is early October, when fog is rare, and the weather tends to be more alike around the Bay Area than not, except for the temperature which can vary depending on how close you are to water.

Sunday was a magnificent day in our neighborhood — cloudless blue sky, 70ish weather, no wind (and wind is generally a precursor of fog/cold weather, as well as an indicator that it’s foggy to the north and/or west). It was much too nice to stay inside, so I worked for a while in the yard, and then by mid afternoon just wanted to be out in nature. One of the closest big swaths of nature, perhaps 5 miles north, on the other side of a north-south ridge between my home and the beach, is San Francisco’s 7 mile long Ocean Beach, which makes for great hiking. I chose to go there. As I headed north along the ridge, it got gloomier and gloomier, and windier and windier, as the fog moved in for the evening. It was not looking like a lot of fun. So I turned around.

Not one to give up easily, I thought that perhaps the beach in Pacifica, due west from my home, would be better. As I headed back south along the ridge, I could see that the marine fog layer seemed to extend to the beach, but it was a little hard to tell because the view was obstructed by natural and man-made structures. So I thought I’d go down the winding road from the ridge to the beach, just to see better. As I got lower and lower, it became more apparent that the fog did indeed extend to the beach, but by now I was so far down the winding road that I’d have to go to the end to turn around. And oddly, there was no wind. By now I’d been in the car so long that I needed to stretch my legs, and it didn’t seem too cold, so I got out and walked along the mile long curve of Linda Mar beach. As I reached the cliffs at the far end from where I’d parked, I realized that the fog had lifted and it was a beautiful, warm, sunny day! (And remember, fog normally comes IN in the afternoon!)

The lesson is this: be clear about what you want ( a pleasant hike), not attached to how it shows up (Ocean Beach vs. Linda Mar beach), keep plugging away toward it, and be willing to change course if it looks like what you want isn’t exactly in the direction you expected. The universe may just line up to give you what you want.