Ice fog

The temperature is minus forty degrees. Ice fog. The Russians call it habitation fog.

One product of burning fuel, be it heating oil, coal, gasoline, diesel, is water vapor. At -40° in towns, on the roads, anywhere masses of people are living or moving, the water vapor collects in the cold cold air. The moisture in the air freezes in to tiny ice crystals, just hanging there, crystals far too small to settle to the ground, a fog of frozen crystals that get's thicker and thicker as one cold, windless, day follows another. Ice fog.

The world around becomes monochromatic. Visibility approaches zero. Driving, with lights on, you often can't see from one telephone pole to the next. The automobile in front of you is hidden by it's own exhaust cloud.

My house is isolated enough, I am remote enough from any neighbors, that I never have had any ice fog around it, but on days like today, driving to North Pole or in to Fairbanks I move in to and through an eery world of muffled sounds, limited visibility and great danger, if one does not exercise extreme caution.

None the less, though I've traveled both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, above and below the equator, I haven't found anyplace I'd rather live than right here.

Watercolor on Canson's 140 pound cold pressed paper. 11 by 15 inches.