Most beautiful fog I’ve ever seen

Yesterday the fog blew my mind.

Fortunately, not so much as to prevent me from pulling my Mini Cooper over as soon as I could find a place to park on narrow, winding Liberty Road in rural south Salem, Oregon.

I'd come over the crest of the highest hill before Liberty starts descending toward the flat land of the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge. 

A wordless Wow! burst into my psyche. i've driven this road almost every day for 24 years. I thought I'd seen  everything that nature could come up with. 

I was wrong. Way wrong.

The fog was acting like no fog I'd ever seen.

The grassy field past the fence I leaned on to take my iPhone photos was clear; beyond, the fog clung in a blend of almost-geometric and Taoist-Zen beauty. Far away, snowclad Mt. Jefferson shone in the setting sun.

(Note: all of these photos are as my iPhone took them. My only editing was, as usual, to press the "enhance" button in iPhoto.)

A barn was just about the only fog-bound sign of human habitation visible.

Looking south, rather than east, tree islands appeared where they'd never been before in my mind's eye.

Moving my gaze to the east, another beautiful fog vista came into view. I couldn't stop marveling at the sharp divide between fog and earth at ground level.

Here, the fog took on more of a misty persona.

I switched to my ProCamera iPhone app at some point. I'm pretty sure this was one of those photos. Different feel. Of course, the sun had been steadily setting, as the sun is accustomed to do.

This patch of fog gave me sort of a cosmic vortex sensation. I waited a bit for the alien spaceship to emerge from it. No such luck. 

Well, like they say, "you had to be there…" I was, thankfully. I wish everybody in the world could have been. 

OK, not really.

Because when Oregon puts on a show like it did yesterday, this state becomes even more irresistible to visitors and residents alike.

And we don't need more of the former becoming the latter, like Governor Tom McCall famously said. Thankfully, because of Oregon's pioneering land use laws this property a few miles from Salem's city limits likely will forever remain farmland.

Beautiful foggy farmland, yesterday.