Crazy Quilt: (memoir) stitching life's tales together any which way

Wraiths

Two days before the 2017 eclipse, our daughter who lives north of Seattle stopped in briefly at our place south of Seattle on her way to visit her sister in Oregon. We'd been invited, too.

A five-hour drive to see two minutes of total eclipse? With all the predictions of horrendous traffic snarling the roads? No, thanks!

Besides, the weather forecast for the Seattle area showed sparkling clear skies for the celestial event. And our area would see the sun obscured by more than ninety percent-- enough for my husband and me.

At the last eclipse in the Pacific Northwest, back in 1979, typical heavy cloud cover muted the effect. It seemed almost sacrilegious now to abandon our locale when blessed by rare blue skies.

Seattle sits on the shores of Puget Sound, a long crooked inlet from the Pacific Ocean. If you sailed south from Seattle's piers, you'd find the waterway veering to the right around the bottom end of Vashon Island. Instead of hauling to starboard to continue your voyage, you could run aground straight ahead, then climb steep bluffs to reach my house less than a mile from shore.

On this particular morning, with sun shining brightly over most of the area, frigid Puget Sound decided to breathe out a dense cloud of fog that billowed uphill in a northerly breeze. Right through our neighborhood.

My husband had set up a camera on a tripod out in the backyard, ready to do time-lapse photography. We waited for the quirky fog to clear.

It didn't clear. It needed hot sunshine to burn off the ghostly, ground-hugging cloud surges, so once the eclipse started, we had no hope. Should have braved the roads to Oregon!

As Murphy's Law says, if anything can go wrong -- it will.

However, Murphy's Law even applies to itself. At times it too goes wrong, allowing you to accomplish something unexpected.

The fog proved a good filter for searing sunlight. My husband got great photos. When I wasn't taking a turn at the lens, I watched wave after wave of eerie wraiths still surging uphill through our dimming backyard woodland. Four towering Douglas firs dripped with forest rain. Ferns below nodded in the maritime breeze. False twilight reigned.

Then the moon passed on its way, unveiling the face of the sun. The fog quailed beneath its glare and soon burned away. Later I learned that less than a mile inland, they had no fog at all. That's okay. Call me quirky but that morning I took sinister delight in my backyard horror movie setting.

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Murphy's Original Law: If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.

Murphy's First Corollary: Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Murphy's Second Corollary: It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

Murphy's Constant: Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.

The Murphy Philosophy: Smile... tomorrow will be worse.