Bay Nature turns 10: Fog by Jon Carroll

In the Third Kind of Fog

by Jon Carroll in the January-March 2011 issue of Bay Nature, shared here with permission.

 

The first time I saw Limantour Beach was in 1975, about two days after we'd moved into a little time-share cabin on Silverhills Road outside Point Reyes Station. Tracy--the woman who would become my wife--and I did not know each other very well; the cabin had been a matter of opportunity and impulse. We knew little about the Point Reyes National Seashore either; that first week we took roads mostly at random, knowing that we would eventually fetch up at someplace beautiful.

On Point Reyes, all roads are the right road.

We discovered that there are at least three types of fog at Point Reyes. One is the thick blowy kind, almost the density of whipped cream, that turns everything into a mystery story, one perhaps titled "Where's That Landmark?" The second kind is a low dense overcast, the meteorological equivalent of a bout of black depression. The third kind hangs low and still over the landscape, drippy and calm and, if you're dressed for it, infinitely romantic.

As you might have guessed, we encountered Limantour in the third kind of fog. There was hardly anyone on the broad beach because of the gloomy weather; even the gulls were muted. Each end of the sand disappeared into mist; the beach was so featureless we had no idea which direction we were walking. It was very much like our state of mind at the time; very misty and very unsure where we were going. We walked for a long time without reaching anything in particular; then we walked back.

As we were walking back to the parking lot, I saw what at first I thought was a mirage--an all-white deer in the low coastal scrub perhaps 100 feet from where I was standing. It disappeared almost immediately, and I thought perhaps I had conflated the animal out of sundry bushes and trees. At best, I decided, I had seen a brown deer turned white in the fog.

Then I saw it again, more clearly. It was a white deer, as real as the ground under my feet and as metaphorical as a Yeats poem. They're European deer, brought to parts of this country--Texas and Georgia mostly--as game animals. Their population at Point Reyes grew rapidly, and the park has made numerous and controversial attempts to keep the deer in check through trapping, relocation, contraception, and shooting. But all this was in the future, and I was in a haze of awe. These white deer mostly live in the wilder southern end of the peninsula; I was lucky to see them at Limantour and even luckier to see them my first time there.

White deer on a foggy day on a quiet beach with my new sweetie--it forever linked Limantour and romance in my mind.

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Jon Carroll has been an Oakland resident and a daily columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1982 but claims the two aren't necessarily related.

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Bay Nature magazine is celebrating its 10th anniversary and we are celebrating that marvelous accomplishment by sharing a few of the pieces from the latest issue.  A big-time Anniversary Gala will be held on Saturday, January 22 at Lakeside Theater near Lake Merritt in Oakland.  Tickets are still available by clicking here.