I could see a light in the distance but I wasn’t sure if I could make it that far.
Or perhaps that’s an overstatement. I knew that there was a light in the distance. Not even that. I trusted that there was a light. I thought that once, perhaps, I had seen the light, once, long ago, before the fog closed in around me. I kept stumbling on towards the place where I thought the light might be. It was, perhaps, slightly less dark in front of me than it was behind me. If I considered that for too long I became uncertain.
Anyway, I had to keep on in the direction of the light, and hope that I was indeed heading in that direction. The alternative was unthinkable: to sit down, and wait for the fog to lift, knowing very well that I didn’t believe that it ever would.
The fog had been around me so long that I’d forgotten that it wasn’t a permanent feature of the landscape. I hadn’t just forgotten what the light looked like; I had forgotten about the trees and the grass and the sea. All I could see was the sodden ground under my feet. One step, and one step, and one step, and perhaps one day the fog would lift, or I’d reach the light.
I wasn’t sure if I could make it that far. I had no idea how far I had to go.
Kathleen Jowitt 