The first time I dropped into the Juniper Valley in Idaho in heavy fog, I didn’t realize how much I was holding my breath until I got through it. One minute I was on the pass out of Snowville with clear skies and nothing but hills and horizon ahead of me. Then, the road dipped, and it was gone.
Gray.
I could see maybe fifty feet. At eighty miles an hour, fifty feet doesn’t last long. In daylight, there aren’t head or taillights to warn you about other cars. At night, at least, you can follow the taillights you’ll never meet (hopefully), trusting that maybe they know what they’re doing.
Daytime fog doesn’t give you that comfort.
I didn’t unclench my jaw for miles. Then I caught it — just a faint brightness, the kind you half-believe you’re making up. I knew where the sun was supposed to be, even if I couldn’t see it.
And then, as fast as I’d entered it, I drove out. In the rearview, the fog was a literal wall. Ahead, nothing but blue sky and the sun that had been there the whole time. My hands ached from gripping the wheel too tightly.
That drive has been coming back to me lately.
I’ve been sitting in my own kind of fog.
Not the catastrophic kind. More the daily kind. The kind that lingers at the edge of everything.
A decision I made months ago still sits in my mind like a box I keep meaning to open. I’ll be washing dishes or answering emails and suddenly I’m back there, turning it over, wondering if I should’ve done it differently.
The fog never answers. It just waits.
And maybe this is self-delusion but there’s a strange kind of safety in it. When you can only see ten feet ahead, you stop pretending you can see the next ten miles. You drive slower. You hold the wheel. Ten feet is enough.
That’s what I’ve been doing: slow miles, headlights on, waiting for something to clear.
One winter night on the same stretch of highway, it was worse.
Fog. Snow. No light but my headlights bouncing off the mist and flakes back into my eyes. My shoulders were locked and my fingers numb from holding the wheel. I watched for deer the whole time and never saw a single one. My body didn’t care. It stayed braced for an impact that never came.
That’s where I am now.
Ready for a hit I can’t name.
I keep waiting for some kind of unveiling. For clarity to break through like a sunrise. But most mornings it’s just… dim light. A little less fog than yesterday. Enough to notice I’m breathing easier. Enough to remember I’ve been here before, and I made it out.
I don’t have a resolution for this.
I believe the choice I made was right. But I also know I’ll probably keep circling the decision in my head. Maybe for years. Ruminating is my superpower.
I keep thinking about that valley. How the sun wasn’t late — it was there the whole time. I just couldn’t see it.
Maybe that’s all I get right now: a thin stretch of road, a little more sky than before, and the hope that the rest is still out there, waiting.
I’ll take it.
And that is enough.
Thanks for reading, and before you go. . .
I’m Aaron Pace. I write from the middle of things — life, business, fatherhood, faith, and the slow work of becoming someone I can live with. Not as an expert, but as someone trying to pay attention.
If this piece resonated with you, I’d be honored if you followed along here on Medium. I write — not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m finally moving again.
If any of this resonates with you, I wrote a book you might appreciate.
It’s called You Don’t Have to Escape to Be Free — a collection of my reflections on identity, meaning, and building a life I don’t want to run away from.
You can check it out here:
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