The Okanagan Valley markets summer. Summer is an ancient European idea that has a lot of currency in Canada, where there’s a lot of winter, and very little in Guatemala, where there’s what passes for summer pretty much the whole year long. But then the lake begins to cool and fill the valley with the first winter fogs.

These are the ones that keep the Arctic cold from the valley, and let it roll on down south to the Pasayten Wilderness in Washington. These last few days, many people, drunk on summer, have been complaining about the fog. Complaining? Why, just look at it!

You couldn’t get light like this in a million summers. This place is a photographer’s dream in the fall and winter, when the light fills the air and the sun and the fog together act as a focussing and softening lens. Here are some ancient peach trees, soaking up the fog that has kept them alive all these years.

What beautiful light. Here’s some mullein and wild asparagus shining in it.

In the fog, the sun is in everything. It is focussed, there to plainly see where it always is, but hidden in the glare.

Bean Garden in the Fog Months

This weather is a good antidote to all those electronic cameras that ramp the colour values up in order to hit people in the visual cortex. All that is like shouting. This, though …

This is light whispering in your ear.