I like fog. I like how fog rises up from the ground—a warm breath of earth against a colder sky, a sharp exhale of river kissing air. And I like how fog plays games with the world. Certain branches pop out of the dancing atoms of water and air—sharp and strange and silhouetted—and figures in the distance fade and then swirl back into focus. The light from the sun bounces at odd angles from vapor and I feel dreamtime spiraling nearby, a painted serpent chasing its tail… I want to share three small reflections with you. THE ODDS ARE GOOD YOU’LL RUN INTO WHAT YOU NEED WHEN WANDERING IN THE MIST: When I think about this collaboration, I’m aware that the odds of it happening were pretty darned slim. Neither Ron nor I have ever met Amity in person. We’re three folks who regularly share our creative energies on Facebook, and it was Facebook that tangled us together. And while Ron and I have known each other for nearly twenty-five years, we spent much of that time not liking each other enough to do more than smile and wave if we saw each other at all. Committed, art-inspired wanderers beat the odds all the time and find each other in the mist….even when they don’t know they’re looking for each other. TAKE CREATIVE SUSTENANCE WHERE YOU FIND IT: November 23, 2012. I saw the felt-thick fog roll in from the creek down the street. I drove to Louisville the morning of Ron’s 62nd birthday and I got him out of his hermitage and back across the river. It was cold. Ron was bundled up. I said, “Stand there,” and in that moment, the rising sun broke through and shattered itself in gold and amber on the fog pluming from the creek’s valley. Ron became a black-paper etching against the scene. I took the photo. Turning and looking in wonder at the billowing mist, dancing orange now as the sun rose higher, Ron whispered, “This is…the Valley Where the Fog Lives.” And so the valley gained a name and, soon after, Ron wrote the poem. Amity saw the poem and she imagined a cormorant dipping its wing into the lake against the rolling dance of water and air. She conjured swaying spirit of cormorant, dazzle of mist and she carved Ron’s poem in hard-lined ink-silhouette from a piece of parchment. A new piece of art was born. Humans long for connection and long to reinterpret the world in new ways. LET IT HAPPEN: Surrender control. I’m not good at this. I was raised to be good at control. The older I get, the more control wants to run away from me at top speed, and these days I’m glad to let it. O, not the control that is self-discipline. I’m getting better at that one, curiously enough; I make myself create every day, whether I “feel like it” or not. It’s that other one, that dangerous control. The control that wants to manage every aspect of everything I do and make. That’s the one that trips most folks up. I know many fine writers who don’t write because they can’t assure the committee of critics in their brains that what they write will be good enough. I know many fine photographers who edit the life right out of their images, leaving plastic products pixelated in their wake. I know many fine folks who don’t pick up a pen to draw or an instrument to strum because the first time they did, someone raised an eyebrow in surprise that they weren’t perfect. And many times, creative folks wander into each other in the mist and the chance of collaboration is right there, dancing swirling and singing near, and they worry so much about what the other person might “do” to their work that they cannot see the invitation to dance together through the spiral because they cannot clearly see the outcome in their minds’ eyes. So they don’t; they don’t venture where they don’t see, they don’t shout messages of encouragement to each other across the clouded way, they don’t walk in faith through the dreamtime. And while their journeys from there may be grand, there’s a missed chance at magic that will never come in that evanescent form again. I’ve got to tell you, some of the things people have done with my photos and my words over the years haven’t pleased me. For a long time, I declined invitations to collaborate—not for want of time, but because I was too damned rigid about what might be done with my work. To hell with that. If you hear someone singing through the Valley Where the Fog Lives, and their song is a call to dream together, let it happen. The mist will swirl on from there, but you may find a treasure in that moment, as I have in this collaboration with Ron and Amity. 16391/1561/317 of 365 (13 November 2014): The Valley Where the Fog Lives, Redux Scribing by Amity Erwin Parks; words by Ron Whitehead; photograph and composition by Jinn