Sunsets in the desert, spring in New England, black-green oaks lying on
tawny hills in Marin County, fields of cotton on red soil in Georgia,
surf on the rocks of Maine, moonlight on Mobile Bay, and the way the fog
comes upon San Francisco on summer afternoons.
Sometimes when all its hills lie sparkling in the sunshine and children
play on the sidewalks, young fellows whistle, business autos go
zippity-ip around the corners, and the whole city is out of doors or
hanging out of the windows, then suddenly in great billows the fog comes
rolling in through the Golden Gate, and between the hills right up the
streets into the city.
Then immediately all is changed and everything is nearer and more
intimate and nothing of the city is left but the street you’re on. Then
you hurry home for supper and home seems good and sometimes you even
light a little fire in the grate.
Still it is not a cold fog, it is not a wet fog, it is never an unkind
fog. It comes swiftly, but very gently, and lays its cool, dainty hand
on your face lovingly. Hands are so different, sticky or wet or clammy
or hot, but the hand of the San Francisco fog is the hand of a kind
nurse on a tired head. The rain is a beautiful thing too, but the fog
has another significance.--It is the “small rain” that Moses spoke
of--“My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the
dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the
grass.”
It is very beautiful too. My, but I’ve seen fogs that were ugly, and
heard the fisherman say “She’s pretty thick tonight.” San Francisco fog
is not like that, but like great billows of a bride’s veil. Then in the
morning when the sun comes it chases the bride and her veil out so fast,
and they go out to sea together, sunshine and fog.
The other morning I awakened very early and there in the square of my
window was a hard, black cube against a white background. I lay there
and blinked and wondered where that telephone pole had come from, which
like Jack’s beanstalk, had grown there overnight. Then I saw that the
fog had shut out the whole world and brought that pole close, and made
it seem big and formidable and ugly.
The fog makes some people lose their perspective, and for others it only
wraps with a great kindness the whole world and blots out all ugliness.
But upon everyone, upon the just and unjust, this San Francisco fog lays
its gentle hand lovingly and with an ineffable kindness.