Slight Detour: Randomness in the Fog

I probably cooked your food

---Eddie Dionne

🍗🍠🍟🍤

Nowadays, Eddie might even fix your sandwich when he's working and not out ice fishing at McArthur Lake about 20 miles north of Sandpoint.

I told my next-door neighbor Leslie that I was headed off to find something . . . anything interesting to photograph in yesterday's constant fog.

I found Eddie, and later Dale came along.

Both have cooked food at Kootenai River Brewing Co. Eddie now works at Subway.

The fog has definitely put a damper on our enjoyment of days without snow or rain.

Plus, the mud is returning, and a multitude of dog deposits from over the winter are on full display.

So, knowing that our dogs love going for drives, I loaded them up and took them with me, hoping to find a neat scene or two in the gray gloom of seemingly all the outdoors.

When I met Leslie on the road where she had just collected her mail.

We both agreed that the gloom was not fun, but we also concurred that the upcoming ZAGS basketball game between Gonzaga and Loyola Marymount would help us forget all the woes of the world outside our homes.

And, for the record, it did.

Commentators showered nothing but praise on the team and its individuals as they played a beautiful ball game and captured an easy win.

When I said good bye to Leslie and drove on through the fog in Selle and then Colburn, I wondered if discouragement would soon make me turn around and just go back home.

Determination soon superseded discouragement, though, as I decided to drive to McArthur Lake.

Surely there would be something worth photographing there, even on this gloomy day.

As the lake and one of its docks came into view, there was Eddie, a solitary figure silhouetted on the dock.

"Probably fishing," I thought, figuring I'd just pull in and grab a shot from the shoreline.

Well, just like the fog that won't go away, my resolve to attempt to get a better, closer picture lured me from the car to the somewhat muddy path along a hillside overlooking the dock.

After taking a few photos of an almost motionless and obviously unaware Eddie, I decided to announce my presence.

I yelled down and asked him something about fishing and then asked if I could take some closer pictures of him.

"Come on down," he said, with no hesitation.

So, I made my way, carefully stepping through the bare spots where ice had melted away on the dock.

Indeed, Eddie was ice fishing, and he had caught one fish, a small trout.

Then this nosy old lady continued asking him questions, which elicited that he had been a cook at the Brewery in Bonners Ferry, that he now works at Subway and that he had attended Farmin-Stidwell in Sandpoint when my sister was still teaching there.

"Did you know Miss Tibbs?" I asked.

"Yes," Eddie said.

So, another connection besides food cooked at the brewery was made.

As we continued to visit, Dale appeared. He responded to my interrogations with a gentlemanly slew of "Yes, Ma'am's."

Nice young men and, oh so patient to deal with and put up with the invasion of the nosy old woman with her camera to their quiet fishing spot.

It was a brief visit but meaningful.

I had found that light in yesterday afternoon's fog, and it came in the form of a couple of polite young men finding their own way to enjoy the outdoors on a gloomy day.

Nice to meet you, Eddie and Dale, and thanks for allowing me to interrupt your solitude.

There was more light in the night yesterday with that Gonzaga win and with the Sandpoint-Moscow girls varsity season-ending contest, as you'll see below.

The fog is supposed to persist again today. I wonder what random, enlightening moment awaits.

Happy Wednesday.