Over Prairie Trails by Frederick Philip Grove

ground. There was, here, too, a film of mud on top, but otherwise the road was firm enough. I quickly threw the blankets over the horses’backs, dropped the traces, took the bits out of their mouths, and slipped the feed-bags over their heads. I looked at my watch, for it was my custom to let them eat for just ten minutes, then to hook them up again and walk them for another ten before trotting. I had found that that refreshed them enough to make the remainder of the trip in excellent shape.
    While I was waiting, I stood between the wheels of the buggy, leaning against the box and staring into the light. It was with something akin to a start that I realized the direction from which the fog rolled by: it came from the south! I had, of course, seen that already, but it had so far not entered my consciousness as a definite observation. It was this fact that later set me to thinking about the origin of the fog along the lines which I have indicated above. Again I marvelled at the density of the mist which somehow seemed greater while we were standing than while we were driving. I had repeatedly been in the clouds, on mountainsides, but they seemed light and thin as compared with this. Finland, Northern Sweden, Canada – no other country which I knew had anything resembling it. The famous London fogs are different altogether. These mists, like the mist pools, need the swamp as their mother, I suppose, and the ice-cool summer night for their nurse….
    The time was up. I quickly did what had to be done, and five minutes later we were on the road again. I watched the horses for a while, and suddenly I thought once more of that fleeting impression of an eddy in the lee of the poplar bluff at the “White Range Line House.” It was on the north side of the trees, if it was there at all! The significance of the fact had escaped me at the time. It again confirmed my observation of the flow of the fog in both directions. It came from a common centre. And still there was no breath of air. I hadno doubt any longer; it was not the air that pushed the fog; the floating bubbles, the infinitesimally small ones as well as those that were quite perceptible, simply displaced the lighter atmosphere. I wondered what kept these bubbles apart. Some repellent force with which they were charged? Something, at any rate, must be preventing them from coalescing into rain. Maybe it was merely the perfect evenness of their flow, for they gathered thickly enough on the twigs and the few dried leaves, on any obstacles in their way. And again I thought of the fact that the mist had seemed thinner when I came out on the marsh. This double flow explained it, of course. There were denser and less dense waves in it: like veils hung up one behind the other. So long as I went in a direction opposite to its flow, I had to look through sheet after sheet of the denser waves. Later I could every now and then look along a plane of lesser density….
    It was Dan who found the turn off the grade into the bushy glades. I could see distinctly how he pushed Peter over. Here, where again the road was winding, and where the light, therefore, once more frequently struck the twigs and boughs, as they floated into my cone of luminosity, to disappear again behind, a new impression thrust itself upon me. I call it an impression, not an observation. It is very hard to say, what was reality, what fancy on a night like that. In spite of its air of unreality, of improbability even, it has stayed with me as one of my strongest visions. I nearly hesitate to put it in writing.
    These boughs and twigs were like fingers held into a stream that carried loose algae, arresting them in their gliding motion. Or again, those wisps of mist were like gossamers as they floated along, and they would bend and fold over on the boughs before they tore; and where they broke, they seemed like comets to trail a thinner tail of themselves behind. Therewas tenacity in them, a certain consistency which made