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Charles E. Townsend (ND-ND) http://tinyurl.com/CTownsend

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Fog Sea

From "A Fog-Sea by Moonlight," 1900. Read Online

Reader: Daniel Maloney

There's nothing like the bone-chilling dampness of the notorious San Francisco fog, but taking a moment to appreciate the blanketed calm it brings might warm you up a bit.

Standing on the summit of Grizzly Peak opposite the Golden Gate, Charles E. Townsend found the foggy atmosphere below him incomparably soothing.

"A Fog-Sea by Moonlight," illustration for The Overland Monthly, 1900. Larger.

It was a vast fog-sea with the attributes of an ocean, stretching far into the westward beyond the setting of the sun. Its surface was broken into great billows, gleaming rich-hued in the departing sunlight and combing like surf against the approaches of Grizzly; and neighboring peaks projected through the fog like islands. And still no sound came from this sea.

As the sun dipped into the Golden Gate, the brilliance of coloring was transferred from sea to sky, and the clouds mirrored back the hues the fog had shown.

The moon rose and the stars peeped out, and a softer, mellower glow filled the night.

The air was as balmy and tranquil as of an evening in the tropics, and in strange contrast with the actual fog in all its unromantic dampness that we passed through on our descent.

An East Coast native, Charles Townsend brought a fresh perspective to our West coast fog. His tribute to the phenomenon, "A Fog-Sea By Moonlight," was published in 1900 in the Overland Monthly.

–Contributed by Lauren Busto.