1. I had been praying for fog and one morning last week my prayers were answered. It rolled up the Hudson from the Atlantic Ocean, covering the river with a blanket of silver mist.
2. All of the flowering trees were silent movie stars.
3. The George Washington Bridge hovered serene and ambivalent while the nightmarish apartments towers to the south were almost completely camouflaged. Here, in the fog, it was possible to believe that only beautiful things marked this landscape.
4. I needed to run up the hill but my legs were tired. Maybe, I thought, life would be easier with wings.
5. The park was not as foggy as the riverbank, but at least it was quiet and empty (of people, especially the kind who ride bikes and drive cars and wrap me in dog leashes when I’m running).
6. So far, the spring had been cool and rainy. Having suffered in the past, the plants were grateful for this good fortune and leery of the future. “We’re dreading the summer,” said the heather, and I told them how much I could relate.
7. These flowers were all very curious about the state of the world. “Have you heard of Donald Trump?” I asked, and not a single one of them said yes. There was still hope.
8. The red azaleas, less naive, had formed some sort of coalition. They asked if I would join and I said I would consider it, and then I told them a story. Once when I was living in DC, a friend of mine went on a job interview where he was asked about “coalition building.” In an attempt to lighten the mood, he said that he believed the coalition building was very interesting and attracted a lot of tourists. Despite offering this objectively perfect answer, he didn’t get the job. (At least the azaleas laughed.)
9. The pink azaleas, located closer to the entrance of the park, wanted to know why everyone was talking about Donald Trump’s first 100 years in office.
10. I knew it had been a long time, but 100 years? I wasn’t sure — I had been avoiding the news — but I supposed anything was possible.
11. Maybe we could last another 100 years, I thought, before I ran back into the fog.
