Misty Enchantment
The magic of adiabatic expansion
Not every drawing evokes memories of a particular experience. Some, such as this ginger, simply evoke a place and time, in this case, AntCourse 2008. This world-roaming, annual course was to take place in the cloud forest of the Venezuelan Coastal Range, in the ruins of what had been intended as the luxurious hideaway of a 1930s dictator. Unfortunately, the dictator died when the building was three-quarters finished, and all construction stopped and the forest began its reconquest.
The final stretch of the 4 hour drive from Caracas is up a steep, winding mountain road, ending in a ginger-lined driveway beside a grove of heliconia at the building's foundation. Picture a 4-story, stepped structure built into a forested, steep, undulating, mountainside and curving with its contours. Broken windows adorn the first floor, vines invade hallways and trees grow up through collapsed roofs. When it rains, a small creek flows among the concrete pillars of the building's center. Walls are darkened by sooty mildew or glow green with algae.
About a third of the building, all on the top floor with its vast, paved patio, was intact enough to be occupied and served as dorm, class room, dining hall and kitchen for AntCourse. During the obligatory social hour on the patio at 5 p.m. every afternoon, we sipped our drinks as the fog rolled in over the mountain crest to envelope us in its magical mist, the view of the distant Lago Valencia below faded to white, sound grew muffled and all the remaining world disappeared. All that was visible from our enchanted patio was a huge, nearby tree laden with bromeliads and moss, and hosting a dozen, dangling Oropendula nests.
How did this magic come about every day, so dependably? By middle school, every kid knows that hot air rises, and that as it rises and expands, it cools. Of course, by the time these kids have finished high school, they have forgotten all this again, so that when their college professor says, "Of course we all know that...." they just look blank. Ask a college science major why it gets cooler as you go up a mountain, or why at 30,000 feet the temperature outside Delta Flight 232 is way below zero, and you get answers that are testimony to the impressive student capacity for wild guessing. Don't even think about asking why we have seasons! Or why atmospheric pressure decreases with altitude.
But the simple physical behavior of gases is responsible for an awful lot of biological patterning of the face of the earth, including the cloud forest in which AntCourse found itself. Air moving up and down mountains cools and warms, drops moisture or picks it up, creating mountain life zones ranging from scrub to forest to tundra to glaciers and permanent snow, while in the rain shadow of these mountains the desiccated air supports only desert. In the mountains throughout the tropics, the result is a belt of cloud forests, cool forests enveloped in mist every day as the air moves up the mountains, cooling as it rises. These forests drip with fog, trees groan under the weight of soggy epiphytes and mosses, and the forest is lost in the mist every afternoon, to be revealed again by next morning. Not everyone likes cloud forests, their wetness, their slippery trails, and cool saturated air. But it is hard to beat the magic of sipping a gin and tonic while the world around you dissolves in a quiet, cool mist spilling over the mountains.
I’m smitten by fog and mist, the gentle mysteriousness of it, and try to photograph when I can.
Beautifully written