Dew Line

I was out on a hike, minding my own business, when I overheard a young man describing the science behind the flat bottoms of the cumulus clouds that had gathered overhead like a flotilla of cotton laden barges. “Warm air rises, and as it rises it cools until it reaches its saturation point and then it forms clouds. The flat line is where the change happens, that’s the dew line.”

I thought this revelation might trip some distant memory of 8th grade science class, but there was no sudden: ‘Oh, of course, the dew line!’ Indeed 8th grade has largely slipped into the realm of undocumented rumor. All I remember is a couple of teachers. First, a hulking Science and Phys Ed teacher named Miss Nelson who surely had a first name but was known matter-of-factly as Moose. It was Moose Nelson who prophetically uttered: “Russia schmussia, the country to keep your eye on is China. When things get dicey in China there’ll be a price to pay!” That was 1959. And I do keep an eye peeled.

The other was Robert Halloran, a short, huge-bellied, red-faced, wheezing student teacher who had us read "Great Expectations" in class, and who shockingly informed us of the inevitability of carrying some variety of parasites in the gut — an affliction which I have always assumed was rather actively claiming him. Mr. Halloran was known as Stumpy.

Moose and Stumpy. Rocky and Bullwinkle.

So with these memories and a rekindled thirst for knowledge I googled ‘dew line’ when I got home. What I received was a whole page full of articles on the Distant Early Warning System, that cold war line of defense that anticipated Russian missiles arriving via the north pole. The theory being, as I recall, that an early warning would give you time to locate a grade school to break into and curl up under a desk — or better yet, you might lunge into an air raid shelter from which, if you managed to survive two weeks on canned food, you would then emerge to check the status of the corn and tomatoes in your mother’s garden.

I imagine that the DEW line still exists, now manned by a skeletal crew of men in their 90’s who dress each morning in khakis, do some light calisthenics, and take steaming cups of coffee to their various front porches, where they sip and slowly scan the skies.