Six in the morning and Sintra has not agreed to exist yet. The road up from the village is empty, just me and the sound of my own boots on wet stone. Somewhere above, Pena Palace is supposedly waiting in its yellow and red, but right now I would not bet on it. The fog has opinions about visibility and mine are not consulted.
The forest smells like moss and cold copper, the kind of smell that gets into wool and stays there. Eucalyptus trees lean in from both sides, tall enough to disappear into white before I can find their tops. Three meters ahead, the world just stops. No drama about it, no dissolve, it simply ends and starts again once you walk into it. Nevoeiro, someone called it later, like the word itself needed extra letters to hold all that moisture.
I stop at a bend in the steps that seems to lead nowhere, because most of them do, up here. Stone worn smooth by two centuries of people also looking for a palace they cannot see yet. I take the camera out. Fingers stiff, shutter loud in all that quiet. One frame. I am not sure there is anything on it but grey, but grey has a texture too, if you look. My father used to say fog is just a cloud that lost its nerve. I think about that, standing there, breath fogging up to join the rest of it.
A bird calls somewhere to my left, unseen, unbothered by my presence or the absence of a view. It is the only proof that anything else is alive in this forest besides me and the trees I cannot fully see. Do you need to see a place to feel it? I am starting to think not. I feel the damp settle into the leather of my duffel, into my hair, into the wool of this jacket I bought for a much colder city. I feel the quiet, thick as the fog itself, the kind that makes you lower your voice even when there is no one to disturb.
By the time the shape of the palace starts to bleed through, gold ochre pushing against grey, I almost do not want it to arrive. The fog had its own kind of finished. The camera and I stand there a while longer before climbing on, in no hurry, because for once, neither is the day.
