Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
What Fog Is Good For
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
Just over a year ago, my wife died. A freak auto accident. Crossing the Embarcadero, she never knew what hit her. It feels like yesterday and forever. Like I am lost in my own city.
People have long since stopped asking me what they can do, or even expressing sympathy. Except for historians and Latin-speakers, living in the past is not prologue.
My habitual hikes in San Francisco—you might call them obsessive—are a private solace. My unmapped walks down and up, up and down, the city’s hilled contours or along its bustling boulevards take me nowhere I need to be. Cold, wet, dense foggy days are the best because they cloak my foggy lack of direction.
On my most recent walk of bereavement, my itinerary landed me at the waterfront. Aquatic Park near Beach Street. Fitting since she had been my anchor. My rudder. My captain and crew. My keel.
Facing the bay, unprotected from a sharp-scissored wind, my nostrils flared towards the sea’s saltiness. My ears reddened with the sting. My eyes watered. Mournful howls from distant foghorns reached deep into my ears.
Not far away, maybe 50 yards off, scurrying tourists offloaded from the Powell/Hyde cable cars. They were headed towards either Fisherman’s Wharf or to the repurposed Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory retail complex.
I ignored them. They ignored me. Lost tourists. Lost soul.
If they had bothered to ask, I would have pointed out the neon façade of the Buena Vista Café. Two thousand times a day, the bartenders pour an otherworldly Irish coffee. The cafe’s signature drink is as much a part of San Francisco lore as the 1906 earthquake and fire. I am a regular and, since her death, too regular.
I would also have enthused about the Maritime Museum’s ship models and tableaus of the Barbary Coast. Or with an encouraging smile directed them to the restored old ferries and historic schooners docked—each in their own way dead—at the Hyde Street Pier.
Unnoticed and unneeded, I trudge along the pedestrian and bike trail edging the bay. I am moving towards the Great Meadow.
Midpoint, I arrive at my favorite lookout. A place in our courtship days I had shared with my wife. In the fierce wind, smelling of seaweed, I am alone.
From under an overhang of cypress trees, through the misty fog, my eyes scan the bald head of the Palace of Fine Arts, gleaming white yachts berthed at the St. Francis Yacht Club, the Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito, Angel Island, Alcatraz and the hundreds of sailboats tacking and playing like waterborne squirrels.
I sense, without bothering to look, the approaching sun off my right shoulder. Far off vistas gradually unfog themselves. Then, without a murmur, the sun hits my eyes like a high intensity flashlight. The warmth is welcome, but only touches my fingers and forehead.
As if to pinpoint myself on the city map, to find out where I am, I touch my wedding band.
