The Fog

Thoughts about faith.

The other morning I packed up Ruby in the car and headed to North-South Lake for a hike. An intense rainstorm was predicted to begin later the same day. They said it would last 24 hours and drop several inches of water. Since Ruby doesn’t like to walk in the rain, I figured this was our chance to take one Big Walk before waiting out the storm. And pay our respects to the mountain one last time before the end of the year.

When we left the house, the sun was shining. As we drove up the mountain, I noticed it getting misty. And by the time we got to the lake, we were surrounded by a very thick fog. So thick that it almost completely hid the lake… and everything else.

The fog also created a hushed silence over the area. The sounds we did hear seemed more pronounced. Indiscriminate voices on the other side of the lake. A sudden cacophony of honking and splashing from what must have been a flock of geese taking off. We couldn’t see the sources, and the sounds disappeared as quickly as they rose up from the silence.

Ruby and I walked slowly, and carefully, pausing often to listen to whatever might be nearby. To the stillness. We’d both been on this path before. Many times. But not being able to see much made us more aware. Who was to say there wasn’t an animal out there, or someone around the bend?  

The first time I encountered this kind of fog was almost ten years ago, during the first winter after moving to this mountainous region of New York state. I had never associated fog with winter for some reason, so it surprised me. I remember thinking it looked like a physical manifestation of the grief I was then still experiencing.

The other day at North-South Lake, I interpreted it differently. It made me think of faith.

Before writing this post, I looked up the meaning of the word faith to make sure I was understanding it correctly. According to the Oxford dictionary, “faith” means “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” We hear the word used mostly in terms of religious faith, meaning trusting in a “belief in G-d or in the doctrines or teachings of religion.”

The key word… is trust. If you trust something or someone, you have faith in them.

I don’t mean the kind of blind faith that borders on delusional, like people who don’t believe in modern medicine, or who expect to achieve their goals without making any effort. I also don’t mean religious faith. I mean having a gut feeling, a confidence, an inexplicable trust that, despite the unknowns, everything will be okay. And if it’s not okay, we can handle it.

If you think about it, faith comes into play in so many aspects of life, perhaps every aspect. If we didn’t have some kind of faith – in the world, in each other, in the future – we might never leave the house. We operate on a daily basis with some level of confidence that events will generally unfold as they usually do (which is, of course, why it’s so shocking when they don’t).

Back to the fog.

As we walked through that eerie, quiet, semi-blinding fog, I kept thinking of life’s unknowns. Especially the unknowns in a life dedicated to the pursuit of an artistic endeavor.

When we pursue goals that don’t have an obvious path, or that other people might see as unrealistic or, at the very least, incredibly risky, we often contend with issues of motivation. What keeps us going despite everything?

I would argue that the answer – and what all artists need to have – is a sense of faith.

Faith that we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing. Faith in our own capabilities and talent. Faith in the people we’re working with and their capabilities. And yes, maybe faith that the universe is rooting for us.

I am the first to admit that this is easier said than done. There are A LOT of reasons to lose faith and give up when you’re an artist. Sometimes, it feels like we spend as much time convincing ourselves not to give up, as we spend actually making art.

And yet, we do not give up. We keep going. We trust in… something.

The other day at the lake, I was tempted to turn around and go back to the car a few times. I think Ruby was too.

Then, at some point, it just made more sense to keep going.