New York City to Elizabeth, New Jersey, to New York City, December 27, 2015

★ Fog whitened the view out the window like a coating of road salt. The bleak lights in the Port Authority bus garage were consonant with the wan daylight coming in where it opened onto the ramp. Fog chopped off the boom of a crane atop a rising piece of the new West Side. The bus looped up out of the tunnel, and off to the right spread a glowering midrise version of Manhattan. The plants on the rock embankments were still green. Out in the marshes, the waters were as matte as the paint on a boiler-room wall. Where no one had bothered to build a stretch of sidewalk between the mall and the hotel complex, the bare dirt of the desire path was dark enough to steer around. The lights of the football stadium shone clearly in the distance across the flat brown landscape coming back. The city looked still fogbound from the bus, but after it finished creeping its way through the tunnel, and after a quick subway ride, the air near at hand seemed clear in the blueing dusk, and a gust came down Broadway.