The fogs of Yarmouth

If you've ever had a chance to spend some time in southern Nova Scotia, there's a damn good chance you've had some experience with the rather bizarre fog banks. You can be reading outside, enjoying the hot sun and a light breeze off a small lake, when suddenly the sun fades. You feel a chill, which quickly grows cold with a touch of damp, and the horizon disappears. Then, much like some odd special effects fog-making machine, great wisps of fog steal around the trees and across the water. The houses across the lake recede into nothing, and you're surrounded by a veil of mist that seems corporeal.

And there's silence.

It's kind of cool. Even better is when this happens on a beach at the edge of the Atlantic. You stand on the sand, and watch the dunes behind disappear. If the tide is out, all that is visible is a small stretch of sand in every direction. Occasional a figure will emerge from the fog, smile and greet you (I'm still getting used to this friendly thing they have here -- I'm very suspicious of it), and then continue past and disappear again.

The beaches themselves tend be long, clean stretches, flanked by seaweed-draped rocks and sweet-smelling grass on the dunes behind you. Some beaches collect odd refuse, lost and abandoned remnants of fishing that parted ways with with the fishing boats and pushed ashore. Pieces of rope, rubber gloves... underwear.

My parents say with a smirk, "Do you have beaches like this in Toronto?"

"Of course," I say. "Who doesn't?"