Having grown up in Colorado, I am still unaccustomed to Indiana weather. Since moving here I’ve developed an appreciation for phrases like ‘lake effect’ and ‘humidity.’ I’ve had to familiarize myself with strange new icons on my weather forecast app that I’d never seen before. However, this landscape remains full of surprises. I spent the first 21 years of my life thinking that clouds belonged in the sky, haloing the very tips of distant mountain peaks and only rarely ventured to lower ground. So naturally, my first thought upon seeing this out of my apartment window one Indiana morning was ‘where’s the fire?’ 

Fog so thick I could hardly see across the parking lot had descended upon Valparaiso. It was the kind of weather that made you glad you’d mastered a full patronus during your years at Hogwarts. After recovering from my initial shock (and mild panic) I spent the entire twenty minute drive to work with my mouth open, completely in awe of the shifting, fuzzy grey world I’d woken up to. It looked like someone had smudged the scenery with a giant eraser. A few sporadic patches of bright clear-skied sunshine made the trip all the more bizarre to this dumbstruck mountain girl. Each section of sunny road was bookended by what appeared to be solid opaque walls of silver mist. I look forward to discovering many more wonders of Indiana.