Max and the Fog

I was taking an early morning walk several years ago with my neighbor’s black lab Max.

It was early fall, and small bands of fog could be seen rising from the Minnesota river bottoms and up the bluffs and over the farmer’s corn fields.

Those narrow bands of fog were unique. They shifted up and down over the high and low spots in the farmer’s corn field — and this particular morning I was going to photograph this phenomenon.

As we approached the floating mist, Max slowed down until the tip of his nose just touched the edge of the fog. He stopped in his tracks. He looked at me and I said, “Let’s walk through.” I started walking through the mist and looked back. Max was following me. I took a few photographs and hoped they would show the mystery of the fog. Within a few minutes, the mist disappeared. The sun was strong enough now to chase it away.

When I developed the film, I was surprised to clearly see the landscape of the fields where I had walked with Max that early autumn morning — with no evidence of fog. The only things on the photograph that caught my attention were a few round spots made of colors of the rainbow.

I learned something that day: In nature, nothing is ever what it appears to be, and we have to photograph these moments in our mind’s eye just in case our camera or film fails.