Luck With Fog
I often wonder to myself when I am in moments like this if there is anything else I could have done in my life differently to have not ended up here at this precise moment. Then I realise that every choice I have ever made in my life, from the simplest to the most complex, led me here, to this spot, at this time.
I have made it me life’s purpose to follow these choices without question to see where it will lead me.
There are the big choices like, I will go to Vietnam and then countless small choices like, should I wake now or in ten minutes.
Many of the larger choices set the direction of travel, but it is the smaller choices that get me to that place at the right time in the right state of preparedness.
All the choices both big and small are guided by the over arching decision to think primarily about light as a guide.
My choices get me there and a little luck, like the fog, make every choice the correct one.
I was so excited to be at my final stop on the Ha Giang loop after 3 days of scootering around in these Northern mountains. I arrived in the late afternoon and settled in to rest for a morning shoot. I awoke up to thick thick fog. I opened the wooden window shutter and was met with a world of pure lite grey. Even so, I was wonderfully excited.
But to my dismay (hunger was calling is my excuse) I got no shots. It was just too damn thick. I couldn’t see more than 3 meters the whole time I was out and it was after sunrise by 20-30 minutes.
Then something wonderful happened!
Having no experience in this weather system I did not realize how fast the rising sun would dispelled the shrouded morning. It happened fast. It was like a wind with no wind: the fog moved in swirls and twirls and rose and spread in an air of eerie stillness.
I was heading back to bed when this happened, having made one or two images of grey and shadows (ugh!).
And then, BANG, there it was. I opportunity I had hoped for was set before me and transported me to a place of bliss.
The true morning revealed itself via the power of the sun and its radiance.
The village awoke soon after the fog faded as if it was a blanket of sleep. People started going about their day; going to school, to the markets, to work.
My isolation in the fog was broken and out came life and gratitude.
