Rural route

Morning Mail 12x9 pastel, copyright 2012

In the weeks before the leaves started turning gold, there were dramatic swings in the temperature - cool nights and warm days - which meant foggy mornings.  Not far from our house there are old trees and carefully manicured lawns along one side of the road and brush and weeds on the other before it opens up to pasture.  The morning I took this reference photo the sun was just starting to break up the fog, filtering through the leaves along the road.  I haven't quite figured out how to capture fog in pastels without making a smudgy mess, but I think I caught the early morning light here.

A few weeks later there was a phenomenon I had never seen before.  Everything was covered in light frost, even the tops of the trees.  As the sun came up and evaporated the frost, it turned to fog at the tops of those trees, looking like smoke as wisps trailed into the clear blue sky.  Then slowly it sank down into the fields as the sun rose, becoming very dense at ground level and burning off in the sunlight after only half an hour.  It was beautiful sight, one that made me grateful to be living in the country.