Mountains and Monsters

Mt Hood was erupting throughout the dream. At first we set off down I- road on this long walking hike, and we could see the smoke coming from the top of the mountain (despite the fact that you can't actually see it from there). Then I saw a peculiar flurry of white in the sky near the mountain, like a gigantic monster taller than the hills moved, with snow on its shoulders. It turned out to be just that and it was stalking around, quite enormous. We traveled out to the mountain and were walking along mountain trails. At one point we came to a river which had a log accross it that people were crossing. When I went to cross I came up to an old woman who was also on the log. She said she would let me by and then without warning jumped into the river (to allow me to pass) I was aghast and fell off the other side of the log (but a much shorter distance, onto the bank. She climbed out of the water and was okay, but I was still feeling shocked and guilty. I had to explain what had happened to my family. Later the mountain started to erupt in earnest and I was packing some things to evacuate with my family. I may have had my baby at that time. I also had my cat A- but my other cat was not in the dream and I was concerned about this, wondering if something had happened to her (it was like I landed in the dream and didn't know what had happened in the recent past in my life... had something happened to my other cat that I didn't know about but everybody else knew about?).

Packing to Escape an Invasion

4/29/2008
Dream 1

My mother and I are preparing to go on a trip, possibly to Mt. Rainier, when the country is invaded... I think by China but I'm not completely sure. We start packing up stuff hurriedly. We need to escape to the north, continuing on our trip and hide in the mountains around Mt. Rainier. Other family members are there but apparently they don't need to escape as urgently, while we two are in more danger. The buildings are occupied by the invaders, and we creep around trying to pack up items to take while hiding from them (we are somewhere in town, maybe at the office). This takes a long time, I keep thinking of additional items, like certain scarves, and grabbing them. I have a woven bag which I'm carrying stuff in. I think we are supposed to be under house arrest due to the invasion becuase we have to sneak in and out. There is a concrete building with a lot of books in it, like storage for a library, and I climb in there and try to get some to take with us, but have to evade the captors on the way out. There is a bicycle in front of the office, and I wonder aloud if I should take it with us. I ask my aunt K if it's a good one, but she says she doesn't know anything about bicycles and I should ask someone else. Eventually I think we get on our way.

The general feeling throughout is one of heightened anxiety, escape, time running short. It seems like there's a lot of stuff we have to pack which wouldn't really be necessary for escaping, and we are afraid of being caught as the captors are prowling around in the same buildings and we have to keep evading them. It's not clear why we are particular targets.

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is

4/8/2008
Tuesday morning/Monday night (or possibly the night before?)

I barely remember this but I remember that I was going across the border just north to Canada, to climb a mountain that lay immediately north of Washington. I had the name in mind in the dream, but don't recall it. I think this part was slightly influenced by me having been reading "Into the Wild" the night before at the part where the author goes to climb the "Devil's Thumb". However, I delayed my trip because someone there told me that traffic was going to be very bad going around Everett and Seattle becuase of some kind of construction that was going on, I visualized how this was happening on the map. It was a major disruption around both cities, looking like a weather map showing storm systems but instead of green rain there were blue and red curved paths to the east of both cities indicating the traffic disruption. There was more to the dream but I lost it very shortly after waking up and only remembered it a day later while I was writing the next one.

There was also this weird unrelated bit where I found a website where I could buy a topsy-turvy-swervy-curvy-tispy-skipsy-doodle (a.k.a "the green thing"). At first I thought it was not part of a dream but it does seem that it is since I can't find such a site!

Daytrip to a Glacier

3/24 Monday night?

I am at a hospital for standard procedures, eye exam, etc. My husband is also there. It's irritating me becuase he is off in this game room that also serves food, like hotdogs, and not meeting up with me. I know he's somewhere in the complex, and I've found him there before, but I don't know where he is. I don't want to go look for him again. I may have to miss one of my appointments (I came in for a series of different things). I mention the fact that he's supposed to be there to one of the nurses, but I'm frustrated at him and i don't want to reveal the extend of the disconnection to a stranger.

My sister comes and I go off with her and possibly some other people. I am wondering if I should just leave in the middle of the day, as he is still expecting me to be at the hospital, but I give in and go. There's no point sitting around waiting and we will be back the same day. We travel around the country to sightseeing spots. A cathedral, a ruined castle, natural formations. Flying and driving from one far flung spot to another. I'm feeling kind of miserable and also ab it guilty about leaving, but defiant.

My sister and I arrive at a northern town. I'm still pretty depressed. It is the edge of a glacier, which we can see coming down through the mountains. It's a tiny town, mostly abandoned these days. Maybe once busy during the gold rush. I look for the name of the town, and see a ranch with a big wooden side, it's called 700 Rose. There was another town name I thought it was but then I realize this is the name. I am just with my sister now, we drive around this area looking at the glacier and rocks. There is a woman standing near the glacier, with her back to me, and as I walk away she doesn't recede into the distance properly, the perspective is all off. I realize this in the dream but I don't realize it's becuase it's a dream.

We walk down by some rocks that are carved by the glacier. They are tall thin shards, like those created flaking stone tools. They are many colored and very beautiful, the upright shards thin enough in places to see the sunlight shining through. I marvel at the beauty.

A Photographic Tragedy in Five Parts

Friday night/Saturday morning 2/16/2008

I'm tempted to record these separately because they were in distinct parts or chapters, but at the same time I didn't get the sense that they were different dreams, just a continuation. Some of the same threads continued throughout.

Part 1.

I am somewhat younger, a little kid but not too little. I am going up the old logging road, several others are as well including members of my family. It's some kind of race, plus people are after. If I get to the end in time, I can elude them. There is a large mechanical device at the beginning where the gate would be, like some kind of huge tractor or earth moving equipment. I think it might prevent people from getting through or catch them. I get passed it and run quickly to the end. At the end of the logging road there is an abrupt hill, very steep, down to the house. Some people are going down before me, I can see them at the bottom. I have to be quick. There is a walled garden covered with roses at the bottom. If I can get down there, it will be too late for my would-be captors to catch me. I scramble down the hill and into that garden courtyard. I am safe. I go out through the metal gate where the other people are. I think my grandma (my mother's mother, now deceased) is there, among many others.

Part 2.

It's the present day and age again. I am on a trip and I stop to stay at my Aunt K-'s house. That night there is a lunar eclipse (in the waking world, there will be one in a few days). The moon rises in eclipse, huge and orange on the horizon, many times larger than normal. There are dark markings on the moon, like lines in a ring around the middle, reminiscent of the pattern in an eye. I quickly retrieve my camera. I set it on "bar" which is like panorama but not as wide, and take many pictures. The dark pattern on the moon changes two or three times as it continues to rise, and I take more pictures.

Part 3.

We continue on (the same?) trip, out into the desert. We meet up with our guide, it is my husband (but he's not my husband yet in the dream), but he is bigger than my husband is in real life. After driving for some long distance, we come to our destination, which is a cluster of huge rocky mountains in the middle of the desert. An old guy we run into at the entrance takes my my right arm and looks at it. He says that I will soon lose it or hurt it (I don't remember what he says exactly, but it's in that wise mysterious prophet of doom kind of way).

We continue into the mountains. They aren't really big enough to be mountains, it's more like just a big rocky area with very tall rocks. We wind in between them, driving. Our guide warns us about the little blue and yellow snakes that live here. If they bite you, you will die immediately, they're very deadly. He stops the car and the others in my family get out with the guide and walk up a rocky slope to go look at something.

I see something else. There are several enormous black shiny snakes, bigger around than my arm, wrapped up in a pile on a rock shelf, very close by. They are rare to see, and I have to get a picture. They are so black they are blue, and they regard me impassively, unafraid, but also not moving from their ledge. I will go get a picture while the others are off looking at whatever they went after. When I walk towards the black snakes, I realize that there are tiny blue and yellow snakes all over the ground in between where I was and the ledge. They are only a few inches long and are spaced only a few inches apart on the ground, and are almost cartoonish in their garish appearance and eyes. They move in an upright manner.

I step between them to get close enough to get a good picture, and snap several pictures of the black snakes. But then the yellow and blue ones start biting me. I am bit three times on my left leg, on the top of the foot, somewhere else on the foot, and up my calf on the outside, right below the knee. They cling after biting. It hurts a lot and I yell and run up to the high ground again, knocking them off. Our guide returns and looks them over, then announces we have to get to the nearest doctor as soon as possible. I realize that he must have exaggerated how poisonous the snakes really were, since I'm not dropping dead, but am still somewhat worried. He asks me what limb the old man had warned about, but I tell him it was the right arm and not the left leg.

We all pile back into the vehicle and he drives out through the rocks along the road. We pass a small "clearing" in the rocks off to the right, and I look out the window and see a large grizzly bear, defecating in the clearing. For some reason this is very amusing to me, and I consider making a joke to the others about bears doing it somewhere other than "in the woods", but I realize after some consideration that nobody else is going to find this at all amusing (also nobody else saw the bear). A little bit farther one we pass a goat amongst the rocks and maybe some others as well, but this part fades away.

Part 4.

I am still on a trip with my family, but there are more people now, it's a huge extended family of grandparents, aunts, relatives, possibly even my husband. We have stopped to sightsee at some sort of significant place, and so we walk across a big valley of rocks, dotted with huge mounds like a mima mounds with no grass, made out of boulders much higher than people. When we get up to the high ground, I arrange everybody for a group portrait. Out comes the camera again. But I'm having trouble getting to actually take a picture on the "bar" setting. I keep changing the settings. It turns out I am using a laptop, not a camera, but this is okay, because it's the laptop that goes with the camera and that I will transfer the pictures to eventually, and it can also take pictures. The group is restless, and they only hold their pose or position for a few seconds, then they move and talk to each other, assuming I've taken it. I'm getting very frustrated with them and my inability to get it to take the right picture. Then I realize it's not my laptop, it's a red one. I switch out for my proper one. I'm still not able to take it. The group complains and still I haven't gotten any decent pictures. I finally locate my actual camera and possible manage to snap some, although they probably aren't any good becuase I couldn't get the settings to stick and people kept moving. But the group won't stay together any longer.

Looking down the valley of the mounds that we've just cross, I can see their pattern which I wasn't aware of when I was walking through them. I also see a plume of smoke from one and then fire. I realize all of a sudden that they are volcanoes (very tiny ones :P) and one of them is erupting. I exclaim upon this to everyone and they are all excited, and we quickly run down the hill to get a closer look, standing right at the base (this doesn't seem like what you do after realizing there is an erupting volcano nearby, if you are very smart, but it all turned out fine).

Part 5.

We are back at my parents' house. I am cooking a big vat of soup on the stove, possible corn chowder. There is a guy there, I think named Zach. He is tall and somewhat gangly, we're both teenagers or close to it I think. This is our first get together at my parents house, I guess he is interested in me and I've invited him over, but we don't know each other that well (or that is, I don't know him too well, as I will discover). I have constructed an elaborate dinner, including the soup, but I run out of some ingredient. Otherwise practically everything else is ready to eat. I'm under some stress from preparing the meal. He is hanging around the kitchen not doing much. He kisses me, and it feels like he has slime in his mouth. I am disgusted and tell him as much, scooping a wad of slime out of my mouth with my hand and showing it to him. He suggests that we serve the soup using some kind of excavator scoop (like from miniature construction equipment). At first I am not paying attention and what he says doesn't' really register. But when he says it again, I suddenly realize that I actually DID this, with another guy, who I dumped becuase he turned out to be a criminal or something, at any rate he and I didn't last long. I ask Zach, "what did you just suggest? Because I've done that before with somebody else..." I am very suspicious and he sees this and realizes that he has made a mistake. He excuses himself to go get some corn from the garden for the soup. Turning it over in my head, I realize that it's the same guy and he's reinvented himself in a new persona to get back together with me. CREEPY. As it turns out, he does know me better than he pretends.

I go out to take something to the yard. The yard is totally different than in real life. It's a sunny grassy knoll with apple trees and such, and a barn and rolling hills in the distance. It's a beautiful summer day. When I get back in, I realize that my family has started dishing up their food because they are tired of waiting, even though I'm just about done. They have loaded up plates, some with one item of food, some with two others, etc. None are laid out like I was planning, or with all the courses I created, they've just taken stuff buffet style. I pretty much melt down, after all the work I've put into preparing this dinner I am furious that they aren't going to let me set it out my way. Everybody else complains they just want to eat. I'm beside mad. Zach returns and realizes I've figured out who he is, and I'm mad about that too and want nothing to do with him. I sulk lividly in the side of the yard while everyone else picnics on the grass with the meal I've prepared, out of order and not as I wanted to serve it.

Me as an irresponsible TV character

Jan 28^th (Monday morning’s dream).

At one point I am the character "Charlie" from "two and a half men," but I am also myself. The kid, Jake, is also there and I'm his uncle, but I'm also me. At one point I call my sister on my cell phone (who is my sister in the dream too). We arrange to meet up somewhere; she is coming down to visit me. I think we are going to go on a drive somewhere scenic, possibly up the Gorge. I start traveling up a rocky mountain road the kid. I accidentally let him fall into a huge crevasse where he hurts himself, but I really don't feel guilty enough about it, and I think I leave him there for a bit until someone compels me to go back and get him. Somehow I end up in an altercation with somebody who I don't really know, I think an older woman, in red. I try to elude her but she keeps coming after me, yelling at me about some bad thing I've done. She keeps popping up as the dream continues on and I'm with my sister on our excursion.

It's all very disjointed, possible because I'm sick. I keep waking up over and over in the night and have a hard time going back to sleep. A snowbank enters the picture after I realize it's snowed a little bit in the night.

Dealing in the Desert with a Disappearance in the Snow

Last night's dream

My husband had gone on a walk in a mountainous park. It was snowy there. He didn't come back and I and my family and rescue people went out to look for him, but didn't find him. It was a forested area high in the hills, which looked kind of like where I used to live. It snowed again that night and he did not come back. I came to the realization over the next days that people did not think he was coming back, and he might be dead.

My mother, who had been staying there with me, took me back home, and we were going up to my grandma's house to visit when we saw a sign board with a brown poster on it, and my sister started crying and was very upset. At first I thought it was bad news about my husband, but it was actually a notice about a wake for an old friend of hers who had died a few months ago (in the waking world as well). I was surprised to see her so upset, because she'd already known of his death at the time it happened and had seemed sad then but not so upset. Something had happened to her boyfriend around this time as well, he was sick I think in a life-threatening way. It seemed odd that all three of them were in peril around the same time. It was when she got upset over the sign that I realized that everybody else already thought my husband was probably dead by now, since he hadn't been found.

I was sad, and worried, but not inconsolable or as upset as my sister had been about the sign, because it didn't seem real to accept the fact that he was actually dead, so I kept waiting and hoping. I drove back near the mountain area, wanting to stay nearby and not to return home until he was found, also leaving my work indefinitely to wait and find out.

I started walking alone and found myself in a deserty area, very dry and dusty, with some sage brush and desert plants. I ran into a guy about my age, taller and bigger than me, but very friendly, and I followed him back to a small town, where he lived. He was native american, and it was a native american town, but it was in a somewhat old-fashioned architecture style. The buildings were of the type covered with baked clay, with rounded edges, like in the southwest, but modern and comfortable inside. They were sandy colored on the outside and matched the desert around. I felt a little out of place walking through the town, but he and his family who lived there invited me in and I stayed and talked with them. They knew already who I was, it seemed, and that my husband was lost in the snowy mountain area (it had a name, but I don't remember which mountain it was). They were very nice and sympathetic to me. I stayed for a while, and watched TV with them, there were some issues with reception and we kept getting strange channels.

The guy I met offered for me to spend the night there, as I wanted to stay in the area and I had nowhere to go. He was very nice to me and as I got to know him, I realized that he liked me and was interested in me. I told him that I was very grateful of the offer (I was, and I kind of wanted to stay there), but I reminded him that I was married (I don't know if I said married, or engaged to be married). He said that he knew that (in other words, was not trying to get anywhere with me right now), and he looked sympathetic and it occurred to me that none of them thought my husband was coming back, they were just waiting for me to come to that conclusion as well, and provide comfort for me when I did. He wanted me to know that he wanted to be there for me when I understood that, but he wasn't going to pressure me, although he didn't say this, just showed it by his actions.

I realized that if my husband was really not coming back, I would keep hoping for a long time, and how long would it take before I accepted it? I never accept things, just keep hoping whenever something bad happened or I lost someone. This brought to mind the guy I had loved years before I met my husband, who hadn't been interested in me the same way. I had kept hoping he would change his mind, but it hadn't changed, and eventually I'd forced myself to move on. Looking back I knew it wouldn't have worked out but it had taken a long time to realize that. The nice guy who was helping me reminded me of him in some ways, but more gentle and nice to me.

I tried to think about how it would be and what I would do if it turned out I was a widow, but I couldn't get it to sink in. I spent a lot of time wandering around the area and thinking about it, and wondering if my husband would be found, as the nice guy who'd offered me a place to stay while waiting showed me around the town and the garden and such, and tried to make me comfortable.

The overall feelings of the dream were of sadness, thoughtfulness, the unreal feeling caused by shock, and also a sort of comfort, as if everything was going to keep going and be okay. When I awoke I still felt this and then I also felt guilty about it and about not being more distraught.

Trip to Algae Mountain

I have gone to visit my sister at a place she has been staying for a while, and we go to see the main attraction. It is a big rock set at the edge of a bay or inland sea. The waves wash up and crash over it but you can walk to it in between. She tells me that the rock is best accessed at high tide, which doesn't make any sense, because you can only get to it when there is some ground exposed between the land and the rock. The ground around the rock (normally underwater) is covered with white shells and rocks. The surrounding land is hazy with mist or sea spray and is smooth and mounded with bluffs covered with thick green grass. The rock itself is completely covered (almost upholstered) with that thick, cushiony grass-like algae. It looks like it would be slippery but I manage to climb up it, following my sister's lead, without slipping, and we cross it between waves crashing on it.

We go up to a smooth dark gray small slab of rock, partway up the side of the bigger rock. There is a young man with a backpack standing in front of it scratching something on it with a small stone. When he leaves, my sister follows suit and when it is my turn, I see that people have recorded their names or initials and when they visited the rock. There is a line of alphabet letters and most people have scratched their name/initials and date under the appropriate letter. But some people who have visited many times, like my sister, have their names separate with a list of dates underneath. There is not a lot of extra room to write in and I look for a place to scratch my name and the date. There is not enough space under the letter for my initial. My sister tells me to hurry up, and I realize that a line has formed behind me of several boys (maybe 10 years old) waiting to scratch their names. The first boy in line has dark hair and blacked rim glasses, and looks Asian. Finally I find a small empty space and scratch in my initials and the date (all the dates are years, as I recall). The stone is soft like claystone and easy to carve in. When I finish, I realize that the boys are being rounded up to get back into a van, which is parked nearby on another part of the rock. I realize they have to leave without having time to leave their marks, in an apparently very short but important trip out to this rock, and feel sorry for holding up the line.

After they are gone, an old woman comes up and asks my sister if she found something that the woman's brother or husband (not sure which) left her some weeks or months ago. I had the impression that the man who left it here has passed away or something. It seems that my sister has been coming here often. She looks behind the scratching rock, which has a back sort of like a podium, and removes a pouch, looking through it, but does not find the missing object. My sister is very helpful and eventually determines from talking to the slightly tottery old woman that the object is a Leatherman (one of those folding knife/pliers things). She shows the woman her Leatherman and the woman nods enthusiastically. Then from her purse she digs out another Leatherman, more worn looking, and this one has an enormous screw attached to it, maybe 6 inches long and proportionally thick (it was not part of the Leatherman, just tacked on afterwards). The woman is delighted and thanks her profusely.

We return to a house which is somewhat like my parents' house and somewhat like a house that my grandparents used to have. Several people are taking turns using the bathroom. When I go in, I think to myself that the house is big, fancy, has 7 rooms, and yet it only needs one bathroom. It's certainly sufficient, I think (notwithstanding all the people who apparently keep needing to wash muddy clothes in the bathroom), and comparing this to the real life fact that we recently were looking for a 2 bedroom apartment that my husband insisted had to have 2 bathrooms as well... surely unnecessary.

A bad vacation before life imprisonment

I was on a long car trip with my mother, brother, and possibly my sister. We were going up this road by Mt. St. Helens where we had apparently gone before in the dream world (I have been in real life, but not on this road and it didn't look like in the dream). I was going to be going to prison for the rest of my life at the end of the trip. I am not sure what crime I was accused of committing (or had committed), but the trial had already taken place. I was feeling strangely resigned/numb inside. My sister was with us for part of the trip, but not all of it, and I think I was bickering with her. She may have had something to do with me going to prison.

We had been hiking in the volcano area, and we drove up there again to camp for the night. It was a very desolate landscape, and not much like the actual Mt. St. Helens area. The ground was very flat until a large charcoal gray moon-like landscape rising up to the mountain. We parked at a gravel pull-out beside the road where we had camped in the past, near a small town. I was discussing what we would see on the remainder of the trip with my brother, who was very young in the dream. He was looking forward to a kind of junkyard on the side of the road where they had assembled various metal parts into robot-like figures, which he remembered this from a previous trip.

We had set up the tents and sleeping bags and stuff, and I was sitting in the tent contemplating what it really meant to go away for life, and if I should contact any old friends and tell them, when I discovered my small bag of supplies had been stolen (containing various items of clothes, utensils, pans, and food for the trip). I was furious. I remembered seeing a tall (taller than me), chubby woman with past-shoulder length strawberry blond hair lurking around the stuff in the last town we stopped at, which had some sort of market in session. I tore out to go look for her. I rushed through the stands and items for sale, looking for my things. My mother was there and asked what was going on. She didn't seem overly concerned when I told her they had been stolen. I found some of my things and forcibly took them from the woman, who was upset and protesting. I think she may have had some mild mental disability. She managed to steal some of the items again, and I took them back again. The next morning when we were getting ready to go, I noticed that they had gone missing a third time. By this time, I knew the woman's name, Renee Brene (it rhymes). When I mentioned this, as I sought to find the woman's house, my mother said that she knew her or her mother from a long time ago. She came along with me.

We found the woman was living in a house with my aunt K (my mother's sister, who had apparently moved to this town unbeknownst to us). My stuff, including a bunch of dirty dishes she'd taken, were found there. My mother reminisced with my aunt in the kitchen as I went through each pan and item and washed it (they had food on them), before stacking it up in a plastic bag. Renee was upset and whining/crying a bit. While my mother was talking to my aunt, my aunt brought to light what was apparently an old family secret that my mother hadn't known about. It was a major revelation, but I don't remember what it was. Sometime after that I woke up and realized I had overslept and was late for work.