The Fog Takes Fire

For an hour the valley is not a valley at all but a slow white sea, the ridges are islands, and the firs come up through the surface of it like the masts of something sunk. Then the sun gets underneath the cloud and the whole thing catches. Orange running along the fog the way flame runs along a fuse, faster than you can follow it. It lasts as long as it lasts, which is never long. It has been doing this, unwatched, every cold morning since these mountains cooled.