THE FOGGY, FOGGY COAST

Coastal fog from the Pacific Ocean can be romantic and mysterious. Many times I have walked the streets of San Francisco at night, when fog was rolling in from the ocean, and foghorns were sounding. It was thrilling, like a scene in a Dashiell Hammett mystery. The romance wears off eventually, though, with overexposure.

Recently we visited Patrick’s Point, a scenic spot on the coast south of California’s Crescent City. The campground was overpriced ($35 for dry camping), like campgrounds in all California state parks.  I was disappointed with the park until we went out to gaze at the Pacific from Wedding Rock, a high rock with an easy trail winding up to the top.

Waves crashed against the rocks below and sent spray high into the air. The views up and down the coast were magnificent, justifying the high cost of our camp site. (A couple of girls tried to persuade us that they had reserved our site on the Internet. Knowing the sites were first come, first served, we threw them out. Later we noticed their tents in a site where some young men were camped, and heard laughter, so apparently we didn’t do them a disservice.)

The brochure describing Patrick’s Point mentioned that most of the year the area is “shrouded in fog;” as we were there in October, when the days are sunny and clear, we saw it at its best.  It must be a sad sight during the summer tourist season, when it would be both crowded and foggy.

The Pacific coast in general is a foggy place. My late husband and I lived in Daly City, just south of San Francisco, for four years when I was in grad school, and became all too familiar with fog. In spite of Malvina Reynolds’s snide song about “ticky-tacky little boxes,” Daly City was in many ways a pleasant place to live, but the fog made it almost unbearable. Mildew constantly grew on the shower curtain and any other place it could thrive. We could see only a few blocks down the street.  In winter the fog was cold; in summer it was sometimes hot and muggy, but usually cold and muggy. Worst of all, the fog was depressing, like that in the song “Foggy, Foggy Dew” that Burl Ives used to sing. If I had had to live there much longer, I’d have gone around the bend.