The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on. —Carl Sandburg

There was no denying it, we were lost. There was really nothing we could do but sit and wait for the sunrise that, hopefully, would provide enough light for us to regain our bearings. We pulled the boat against the shore and waited, shrouded in the mist that surrounded us.

I am fascinated by the fog. I find myself drawn to it and, as I mentioned above, sometimes lost in it. Fall, with its overnight swings in temperature, seems to me a season of fog. As a result, I find myself some mornings stopping to take a “fog photo” and reliving memories of moments in the mist. Here are a few of those memories along with several interesting facts about the mysterious brume courtesy of justfunfacts.com.

“Fog is a cloud that is near ground level or touching the ground that is sufficiently dense to reduce horizontal visibility to less than 3,280 feet.” That reduction was more like three feet on the aforementioned morning several years ago on the Tenn-Tom Waterway near Cook’s Bend.

I was heading upriver with my father-in-law, Billy Hull, to hunt deer on the island at Cook’s Bend. We had embarked from our pier headed to the island, and all was fine until we rounded the first bend and ran into a proverbial “pea soup” of fog. Visibility was next to zero, even with the repurposed aircraft landing light that I was using to guide our way through the all-encompassing mist.

We knew that the island was to our right, yet we somehow managed to navigate left and, in so doing, drove through an inlet not much wider than the boat, the only inlet into a slough off the river that was filled with dead trees and stumps. After trying for several minutes to navigate our way back out and into the main river, we finally beached the jon boat on the bank of the slough and waited for enough daylight to allow our decampment.

“Fog forms when the difference between air temperature and dew point is less than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit.” The cooler temperature was a welcomed change after enduring several sweltering nights with no air conditioning. Fortunately, Hurricane Katrina had only robbed us of power and a few trees, she had taken so much more from so many. The morning hunt was a much needed break from the ongoing clean-up efforts.

The dense fog, however, did not care that this was our first chance to take the field in pursuit of the aerial acrobats commonly known as mourning doves as it had shrouded the land in a thick mist. It was my first time to dove hunt in the fog, and the experience was rather surreal.

For the early part of the hunt, we relied on sound rather than sight as, more often than not, the bird was heard before it was seen in the vapor that engulfed us. As the fog lifted, so did our spirits as the shooting became fast and furious and lasted throughout the morning.

“Fog is most likely to occur at night or near dawn when the temperature of the day is normally at its lowest.” I have written previously about the fitful first night that I spent on the Appalachian Trail in the mouse haven known as the Springer Mountain Shelter; however, the beauty and comfort of the morning after is worthy of retelling.

I awoke to the sounds of hikers readying their breakfast, and as the smell of coffee drifted into the loft, I slid out of my sleeping bag and made my way creakily down the ladder. As I stepped from the shelter, I was greeted by a thick fog, the drops of which felt almost like rain against my skin.

My friend Jamie and I shared a cup of coffee with a group of fellow hikers and watched as each packed and left the shelter to rejoin the trail. Eventually, we did the same, and I watched the fog lift above the mountains as we made our way along the rocky path that led to our next destination.

As I thought about my experiences with fog in the outdoors, I began to realize that the catalog is fairly extensive. I killed my first deer in the middle of a foggy canebrake, my first wood duck amidst a thick fog in the tall timber of the Noxubee Refuge and caught my first bass using a topwater bait just underneath a dense fog sitting “on silent haunches” over the lake, much like Sandburg’s fog over the harbor.

Take time this week to venture out early and perhaps you, too, will get lost in the fog. Until next time, I look forward to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.

Email outdoors columnist Brad Dye at braddye@comcast.net.