Fog

by WYMAN RICHARDSON, M.D.

1

FOG! The terror of all navigators, whether on land, sea, or in the air. Great is its power — for it can slow down and stop all moving wheels, spoil the lawn party at the Casino, cut into the resort proprietor’s net, and incite the Browns to wrangling again due to their all-night foghorn sleeplessness. I well remember my Prides Crossing friend’s annoyance when I told him that his snoring had kept me awake all night.

“That was Baker’s Island foghorn,” he explained.

What is fog? The answer is easy. Fog is a cloud. Whenever you are in a cloud, you are in fog. If you are either above or below log, it becomes a cloud. What is a cloud? A cloud is a mass of water vapor which has condensed into fine particles of water.

Why is fog? Generalities are easy to mouth. “Fog occurs when warm, moisture-laden air meets cold air.”Therefore, heavy fog belts are found where warm and cold ocean currents meet. Also fog occurs when there is a considerable difference between a suddenly lowered air temperature and the temperature of largo bodies of water; such as, for instance, the “river damp” which hangs over pond and river during the night and early dawn of a still, cold May or October morning, or the “steam” which rises from the ocean on a belowzero day, and causes such havoc with shipping traffic. But why fog suddenly appears in a certain area, and as suddenly vanishes in the same area, I have never understood,.

The waters of outer Cape Cod are in the “heavy fog belt,” which I believe means that fog occurs on the average on one out of every three days. Fortunately for us at the Farm House, the fog frequently hangs offshore, where ii can sometimes be seen as a low-lying, rather ominous wall of cloud. Perhaps it will drift in and off the lower end of Nauset Marsh, blotting out for a time the East Orleans headland; occasionally, it will shut down thick across the entire Cape and smother us in a blanket of moisture. The next day, likely as not, a hot ” muggy” sou’wester will blow endless strands of fog across and a way to the east, the sun gradually lifting them higher and higher into “ fog clouds ” until finally the sky is clear. Be sure you have your compass, though; for when the sun drops, the wind may drop too. Then that sudden chill east air strikes your cheek, and you find yourself alone in a strange world, landmarks obliterated, familiar objects distorted. Birds do not like fog; neither do I.

One of my earliest definite recollections of a fog experience was when I was a boy. Mel Marble, our skipper, took me out in my father’s 21-foot catboat, the “Kingfisher.”10 Cleveland’s Ledge in order to bottom fish. (Cleveland’s Ledge, incidentally, was discovered by my father and Mel Marble when they were trolling for bluefish in the middle of Buzzards Bay with a 2-pound lead tied 150 feet out on a .300-foot line. The wind unexpectedly petered out, and the lead caught in a rocky ledge. A quick jibe saved line and lead, and soon a little sounding demonstrated a large group of rocks. I believe they anchored at once and caught a good mess of rock [sea] bass, and tautog. President Cleveland, who spent his summers at “Gray Gables” at the head of the Bay, and who was a great fisherman, was told of this spot and came so often to fish it that it has been known ever since as “Cleveland’s Ledge.”)

On the present occasion, a heavy fog shut in and with it came a light northeast air. Does the east wind bring ihe fog, or the fog bring the east wind.?

Anyway, we fished for a spell and then decided to make our way in. Mel got out the box compass and we headed by dead reckoning for Marion Harbor. The jaws of the gaff creaked loudly as the uneasy swell swung the sail inboard and then slatted it back. But through it all came the clear, steady tones of the Bird Island fog bell.

“Gee, this is easy,” I said.

Mel said, “Humph!”

We kept the bell to starboard as we slowly made our close-hauled way. I he bell suddenly sounded very loud. “We’re going ashore on Southeast Ledge, Mel,” I said, in some perturbation.

Mel smiled, said nothing, and kept his eye on the compass. Then, just as suddenly, the sound of the bell stopped. I waited awhile, and then got scared.

“Why did they stop it?” I asked Mel.

“Didn’t,” said he. “Noises hop around in a fog.”

Just then the red Centreboard Ledge buoy loomed out. Our craft not drawing very much water, we left the buoy a hundred yards to port, at which point we were dead to leeward of Bird Island, and very close to it. No fog bell. Later on, when we came upon the black Seal Rocks buoy (and left it, also, carefully to port) suddenly the bell became insistently loud. Since then I have often observed that sounds, in a light air, can best be heard across the wind. At the Farm House we hear the whistling buoy, or “grunter,” off the Inlet, which is southeast of us, in a southwest air; and sometimes, when the breeze is southeast, we hear the whistler off the Peaked Hill bar to the northeast.

2

FOG can do queer things. Some years ago, a friend and I sat in the grass on Porchy Marsh, at the spot where the then high, sandy Porchy bar made out across the channel toward Teal Hummock. It was a sultry September afternoon; and soon the fog shut in thick. Shooting in thick fog is not much fun; for the fun of shooting lies in being out of doors, in a pleasant spot, with a good view both of the surrounding landscape and of the passing wildlife. In a fog, one’s world is limited to a 300-foot radius. Nothing is seen except for an unexpected, ghostlike apparition which turns out to be a herring gull. Occasionally, the clear, pewee-like notes of a blackbreasted plover, or the more staccato call of the yellowlegs, bring forth a burst of frantic, and usually ineffective, imitation from our whistles. A flock or two of peep will suddenly swirl over our heads, so close as nearly to remove our hats.

On this occasion, just before dark, we had shot at a bunch of summer (lesser) yellowlegs; and after a vast amount of banging, we managed to bag one — small pickings for two hungry men. As darkness began to fall, we picked up and started to row across the channel toward the just visible Middle Flat. Halfway across the channel, we wondered if we had remembered to put our game inside the boat. We both rummaged around in the cockpit, finally found the bird, and looked up. We still could make out both the Porchy and the Middle Flat shore. We continued on our way home. Fifteen minutes later, when we should have been off Uncle Heeman’s Creek, I became uneasy. We came to a wide creek; but even in spite of the tide, it looked too big and did not run off at the correct angle. I took out my compass. We were headed south, out near the Inlet, instead of north, just off the Cedar Bank and nearly home. It gave me a shock I have never forgotten. Of course, what had happened was that when we both were busy looking for our bird, the boat had made a 180-degree turn. When we looked up, the relative positions of the dimly seen shore lines remained the same, and we went south instead of north. I was glad I had taken my compass with me; indeed without it we might have become involved in some real difficulty. Since then. I have never gone out, either in the Nauset Marsh, or on the West Shore flats, or in the woods, without a compass.

And fog can do still other queer things. A foggy day on the beach, especially if one is alone, may give one the creeps, although perhaps not to the extent of bringing about a precipitate retreat. My brother was casting off the beach into the fog, one afternoon, and working north along the shore. He came to a man sitting at the top of the rising behind him. “Any luck?” asked Harry, backing up the beach as he reeled in.

There was no answer. Harry turned around and saw to his chagrin that he was addressing a lobster pot which had washed ashore.

My daughter Margaret and I took out the canoe early one black morning. As we left the boathouse at the Salt Pond Creek, a perceptible lightening of the previously black darkness suggested that possibly the almanac was right. We crept along under the Cedar Bank, which by now could easily be made out, and fished up the Cedar Bank Channel. Gradually, the light increased, but we could not see much afield. After quite a long while, the cupola of the Nauset Coast Guard Station suddenly appeared and we found ourselves close to the bluff at the head of Nauset Bay. There was no evidence of bird, or any other, fife. However, as we turned back and headed into the Minister’s Channel, our friend the musical crow could be heard calling from the vicinity of the Cedar Bank.

A short distance below Minister’s Point, which marks the junction of the Minister’s Channel with the Beach Run to form the Beach Channel, Marg hooked into a fish and after a few minutes skillfully brought a nice 2-pound bass to the net. This area, between White’s shanty and the cut-through below White’s, has frequently produced a fish. (One of my friends, however, complains that these directions are insufficient, inasmuch as White’s house, some ten years ago, was completely washed away during an exceptional tide and storm; and the “cut” through the dunes, which produced such a convenient sandy point on which to make a duck blind, has for at least five years been blocked by rapidly growing sand dunes.) When at last we paddled out by Caleb’s Hummock at the mouth of the Beach Channel, quite happy to have caught a fish, the general brightness indicated that the sun was up. However, except for Caleb’s Hummock and the opposite nearby edge of the Middle Flat, we could see nothing. Our world became a peeuliarly spherical one, limited to a narrow 200-foot radius. I took my compass out and put it on the canoe bottom before me. For below the mouth of the Beach Channel there is a stretch of wide water at high tide.

“Look,”I said, pointing. “There is a man fishing on the Porohy riffles.”

I could see him standing up in a skiff and casting.

“Yes,” said Marg. “We better not go too near.”

“I hear he has caught a lot of fish that way,”I remarked, as I headed away to give him plenty of room. Just then he rose from the water and flew off. He had suddenly turned into a young, dark herring gull.

On another occasion, during the war, my daughter Charlotte and I made almost the same circuit in the midst of a thick fog. On our way home, we heard the loud roaring of motors.

“Lost airplane,”I said and shuddered a bit. “Thick fog, no radio direction, gas low, hoping for a safe crash landing.”

We paddled harder; the engines roared louder; and soon we saw the huge hull of a flying boat coming to rest off the First Hummock, across the channel from the Cedar Bank. We really made time, pushing the canoe so fast as to make her dip with every stroke. And then, suddenly our crippled airplane began more and more to take the shape of a motorboat. When finally we came close, it turned out to be a cabin cruiser, trying to get out on the top of an unusually high tide and well stuck on the flat just across from First Hummock. What in the world, we thought, was a boat of this draught doing inside the Nauset Marsh? We told the disgruntled and somewhat truculent skipper where the channel was (he found it on the evening tide), and ever since have been skeptical as to his occupation.

The suddenness of fog is one of its worst features. Last summer, we went out in the canoe at high water, a couple of hours before sunset. It was a beautiful, warm afternoon, with almost no wind and a clear sky. We again cruised over the Nauset Bay flats, but found no bass. On our way down the Minister’s Channel we could see umbrella handles here and there, sticking up out of the marsh grass. Occasionally, one would suddenly straighten out and a great ungainly, yet strangely graceful. loosejointed hulk of a bird would leisurely take off, trailing long legs behind and eventually curling its neck back over its shoulders. The great blue herons like the Middle Flat and at high water, in September and October, collect in loose groups, each bird striking a different pose. One will stand erect, sharp beak lifted and gleaming yellow eye turned skyward; another hunches up, halving his size, draws in his neck, cocks his head, and eyes the water beneath him. If luckily you have him in the field of your glasses, and if he does not suspect your presence, you may see a sudden motion. So fast is the strike that only the obvious swallowing undulation of the neck, with head uplifted, indicates the destiny of a hapless minnow.

A half hour before sunset finds you out of the Beach Channel below Caleb’s Hummock, just as the ebb begins to sweep across the Goose Hummock flats, by every rule the time of times to catch a fish. But the fish do not seem to know the rules and there is no excitement. And then silently and relentlessly small pullets of fog come drifting across the dunes “on little cat feet.” A slight chill creeps up your spine; the extra sweater is retrieved from under the bow. Old Sol, a moment ago so strong and invincible, suddenly begins to lose his power. A cold air from the east riffles the water. And then, all at once, your world is blotted out. Abruptly, the roar of the surf seems close aboard.

“Let’s get back,”you say, somewhat casually, as you fish for the compass in the bottom of the tackle bag.

As darkness rapidly descends, the thought of the Farm House seems good. A fire, so out of place this hot noon, now seems highly desirable. You put a bit more drive to your chunking paddles, follow up the Porchy shore and around Tom Deane’s Hummock, and take a bearing just west of northwest from Pull Devil Corner. The gray dimness becomes darker, all landmarks disappear, and you wonder whether the black or the white end of the compass needle points to north. Fortunately, you have scratched the formula on the back of the ease: “B = N.” Of a sudden, the cricket chorus hits your consciousness. Then a strange headland, with an unusual pattern of cedars, looms out of the fog. Whore are you ? This is unfamiliar ground. Perhaps you got turned around. This looks like the lower end of Skiff Hill No! Here is the Salt Pond Creek and there is the boathouse, You are safe in port. Now it seems ridiculous to have been so, yes, scared. The weather is warm, the marsh landlocked except for a narrow inlet; real harm is well-nigh impossible. And yet — and yet, the fog gets you down. You want home. And you are afraid you are not going to gel there.

And then, at home at last after the long climb up the hill, standing before a crackling fire with a glass in hand containing just a smitch of bourbon, you forget your fear. Fog is not bad; it is good fishing weather. There is usually little or no wind, and the bright sun, with its dark shadows, is dimmed and does not frighten the fish. You must make an early start tomorrow.

Fog! Terror of all navigators! Yes, even on the Nauset Marsh you east your spell and bring a chill to the stoutest heart. Birds do not like you; neither do I.