Natural Horror

We always talk about horror films being scary or ludicrous. I for one seldom get scared watching even the best horror movies. But as always nature made me look like a fool yesterday. It is Fall in Buffalo now in November. Trees shed their leaves and are reduced to a bare collection of brown twigs as branches. I travel on interstate highways where there are thick forests (now huge networks of brown twigs). A monotonous brown expands over the entire forest cover. You can't help getting fixated on the colour when you drive. So I was driving and staring at the brown forest when all of a sudden a white tree appears from nowhere. This white tree seemed to be of a different wood-type than the ones surrounding it and over the complete forest. No leaves, branches looking like a bare skeleton and all white among brown. All of a sudden. That scared me like anything. No motion, no noises no histrionics. Just stillness with two contrasting natural colours. That was natural horror! Then reached office, continued the work day and in the evening headed back. It was all foggy with very low visibility. The rush hour was gone since I left a little late, so pitch black darkness on the highway. Even the fog goes unnoticed in the dark until.. Another horror. A huge beam of scattered light appears from nowhere and rotates. I can't understand what it is. The presence of the light makes visible the presence of the fog. After a while I understood that it was the headlight of a car heading 90 degree from my road on a distant turn. The fog had scattered the light far beyond the car and the turn that separated its path from mine. I proceed further. Now appeared huge red glow adjoining the road. I think it was a hotel or a shop with its neon signs. I try to look carefully. Nothing. I proceed and the glow reduces. It must have been some light scattered by fog again but I could not find out what it exactly was. A scary experience nonetheless. The fog driving fatigued me. I returned home, ate and dozed off by 9.00 pm!