The day after a big thunder storm I was driving down the road and saw something that caused my lower jaw to drop in amazement. You know how sometimes you can see the fog rolling in? Or can even see steam lifting off the ground/road after a good summer rain? What I saw seemed to be a mix of the two. Big swirls of cloud rose up off the ground and up toward the sky so fast, at first, I almost thought it was smoke from a factory. But when I passed the spot where the fog/mist was coming from, I saw it was not a factory, but rather a natural occurrence. Fog/mist was rising up from the ground so fast, and in such large quantities, that it gave the appearance of smoke. It was so cool and unlike anything I'd ever seen. Fog coming toward me like an overzealous puppy, yes, I've seen that. Mist rising sluggishly back to the sky, same thing. But fog/mist swirling back to sky in the shape of a funnel... nope, never seen that before. I wish I could've taken pictures to show you all what I saw, yet the best I can do for now is describe what I saw.
That raises an interesting question. When we see awesome things in our day to day lives and want to share what we saw with the world, how do we go about describing what we saw? Even when words don't do it justice? Do we give a sketch of what we saw and leave the rest up to the imagination of the person hearing our story? Or do we take out our imaginary brushes and paint pictures for people to see with more than their minds?
This is something I struggle with--trying to find the right words to create the picture in the readers mind. I admire writers who seem to do it automatically. I've started asking my grandkids to describe things in their words. It gets my mind working, and kids are amazing.
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