Gloomy weather persisting, an attitude adjustment was needed.
If fog there must be, I would jolly well embrace it.
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We set off to enjoy shrouded views.
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Defective windshield wipers contributed.
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A vehicle roared past, then was obliged to dawdle all the way to Greenwich.
Which shows how pointless it is to fuss.
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We went to look at Stump Church
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Last time we came this way, we were chasing a sunset.
That day it was icy.
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Today, mud.
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And murk.
But it was interesting to see the variation of colours in the landscape which would normally be all white.
When I moved back to New York in 2018, I was prepared for cold, snowy winters but they have been getting progressively milder.
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Which is not to say there couldn’t be a blizzard in the offing.
These days, anything can happen.
On 23rd April 2023, there was a magnitude 3.2 earthquake in New York, up by the Canadian border near Lake Ontario.
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It’s unlikely to be an earthquake that gets me, though.
The Nisqually earthquake that struck Seattle on 28th February, 2001 was 6.8 magnitude and I didn’t even feel it.
Driving home at the time, I felt the car squirm but dismissed it until I saw traffic lights swaying erratically and people coming out of buildings.
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“Oh”, I thought, “tremor!”
When I got home Yeti was very cross and hiding under the bed, alarmed probably more by various items crashing to the floor than by the shaking.
It was a Wednesday, so it was my day off and I missed all the fun at the airport. A big crack had opened up in the stairwell by the office and everyone was fairly shaken up.
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Not that I particularly wanted such an experience, but I felt I had missed the whole thing.
It was Mt Rainier that worried me.
From the day I learned about volcanoes, I was afraid of them and when we travelled to foreign places, I always viewed mountains with suspicion and dread.
Maybe I saw a report about volcanoes on a newsreel when I was a kid.
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Wherever the fear came from, it was deeply seated. After extensive spinal surgery in 2007, I was on a morphine drip which sent me into a 3-day trip in which a volcano was a vivid feature.
Generally speaking the experience was not a high point of my life but it was the morphine-induced nightmare that stayed with me.
After that, I became nervous of my proximity to Mount Rainier.
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It’s a beautiful mountain and it holds a special poignant memory for me.
In September 2001, I had a week’s leave to spend with a very dear friend who would stay with me after some business meetings.
He rang me early on 9/11 and told me to turn on my television.
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My friend’s business was aviation-related and in the circumstances the meetings were cancelled, so he drove out to my place.
It was hard to know what to do but we felt a need to be somewhere peaceful and went up to Mt Rainier for the night.
Gazing at the dark sky, I remember thinking how unique it was for there to be not a single aeroplane in sight.
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In the hotel lobby, someone had sat at the piano and was playing the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
No one was talking very much.
What was there to say?
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From the building where I had worked at JFK, you could see the World Trade Centre. I was fortunate not to have been there.
It was bad enough watching those events on television.
At the same time, a part of me wanted to be with my friends in New York.
I offered to cancel my leave so I could help with the situation at the airport but with no flights, there was no point. By the time I returned, flights had resumed.
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In the end, you have to get on with life.
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Stump Church in the mist.
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A good place to stop for now.
Dismal weather tends to stir up dismal memories!
The white church is a very ‘American’ photo. It looks as if it could have been taken in 1864, during the civil war, then later colourised.
The mud is very familiar to me. I have become closely associated with mud since moving to Beetley in 2012.
Best wishes, Pete
And Happy New Year, in case I miss you tomorrow. xx
Thank you, Pete and the same to you!
And once again, the world looks so much different in the fog! Volcanoes and earthquakes aren’t disasters I ever really think about – the chances are slim that it will hit us here in SA … though, you never know for sure. Love your photos in this post.