Sunset Mountain in the Fog

Now that we are back in Highlands, there doesn't seem to be as urgent a need to post to this blog on a daily basis as I did when we were in Atlantic Beach.  It has been cold, and it has been wet, but we have found enough windows of opportunity for running, and I realized this week that we are sticking pretty closely to a training plan that I devised when we returned despite the weather.  The Crystal Coast Half was three weeks ago this weekend, and the Flying Pirate Half will be three weeks from now, a week after we arrive in Duck for our annual April vacation.  (We have been going to Duck every April since the year 2001 so I cannot honestly call it a Second Sabbatical.) 

The training plan consists of some long Saturday runs and a general increase in weekly mileage.  Last Saturday we checked off eight miles, and this Saturday ten miles, on mornings that threatened rain but then almost miraculously cleared.  If the day is a good one, we are thinking of running the Black Mountain Greenway 5-K on April 8, a week before the half marathon, as a final tune-up.  So far my knee is holding up pretty well.  And it seems to help my recovery to walk on those days when I am not running.

Sunday I went up to Town and worked out at the gym, then parked in an empty parking lot across from the Nature Center and started up Sunset.  Saturday's rain had come and gone, and by now it was just thick fog, that kind of fog that brightens the higher you climb so that you feel that in only another 500 feet or so you might burst out above it, as I have on a few glorious occasions in my life, into blue sky with the fog spread out below in a sea of clouds.  But I never reached that point on Sunday as I climbed up the familiar road, walking in eerie silence and not passing a single person.

The top was beautifully fogged in!  A few sparse pine trees could be seen at the edge of the rock, less and less visible the farther out they were.  I could hear no traffic whatsoever.  If I had not known that there was a thriving but sleepy little Sunday-afternoon Town down there, I could have been in the middle of a wilderness.

I posted this photo on Facebook with the caption, "Stunning view from the top of Sunset Rocks on Sunday afternoon."  I did not mean it as a wise-crack.  The bright, pure fog was stunning, and I sat on the little bench up there for a good while, enjoying the solitude, the total silence, before coming home.