The city thrives when things are at their most indistinct, when sky and lake merge into the strangest of borderless regions—over there, to the east. By day, with everything in sharp focus, the city looms like a vast and complicated folly on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. But during times of darkness, times of fog, and even times of howling, stinging blizzard, the city transforms into something else. It attains a kind of protean beauty that is neither city nor wilderness; it is both, in some ways, and something else all together. On a morning with fog, the city shifted. To my south, skyscrapers loomed like the fossilized ribs of some prehistoric leviathan, but they were hidden, obscured, washed away by something gray and without form or feature. The North Branch of the Chicago River stood higher than normal; the river itself flowed in serene and perfect silence: proof of flooding, or at least the promise of floods. Boulders and tree-roots like gnarled mangroves lay submerged: home to future generations of fish, though I doubt that the river will remain at its near-flood levels, or that any appreciable populations of fish actually dwell in the urban stretches of the Chicago River. It flows the wrong way, after all; there is too much concrete, too much metal, and too many kids throwing things (including each other) into the water. Fish, I am told, require fewer disturbances. And so, on a morning with fog—as the city shifted—I sought photographic subjects other than the strangely fishless river. I found trees and ducks. I found blackened, wilted mushrooms, long past their reproductive flourishes. I found ivy, dabbed with jewels of fog-drops. Most spectacularly, I found lichens—whole sprawling colonies of symbiotic life forms. I found moss as well, and hearty fungi, clinging to the corners and fringes of urban development. It was the lichens that drew my attention. On a morning with fog, I walked with Corey (before meeting with Kate and with Steve) for brunch and for movies, and the preemptive celebration of a military-tinged holiday. And it was on this morning that I saw greenery in all of the flagrant shapes of amoebas and paint-splatters. Some recalled the alien organism known to science-fiction movie aficionados as The Andromeda Strain, and—indeed—upon photographing this example of urban-adapted lichen, I thought of that oddly crystalline organism: a dab of something green, quivering and color-shifting at the onset of cellular mitosis. The lichen didn’t quiver or shift color. It didn’t split in two with Hollywood music-as-sound-effect in the background. It simply sat there, gorgeously. It complimented a piece of red-painted wood. Spiders made their homes nearby, their webs burdened with dew-drops like strange, globular diamonds. The fog—heavier than I’d seen it in a while—cloaked everything in an almost tactile silence. On a morning with fog (as I walked with Corey) I could have been anywhere: along the banks of my beloved Vltava River, or in some stretch of Siberian wilderness, dodging flies the size of Sikorsky gunships. I could have been in Agara, or in Ükür: in the presence of strange machines. I could have been in a small UK town, as well, in the company of charming dogs sniffing after not-so-charming things. As I am aware of Andrea’s (durleybeachbum’s) love of lichens (and anything born of nature) I immediately thought of her when I nabbed this photo. As I’m also aware (belatedly, of course) of her birthday, I dedicate this (belatedly, of course) to her, along with my best wishes. Chicago’s thick fog has since burned away, but the lichens at home along the city-fringes remain. That is a good thing. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all on the verge of a great week.