Most of the end of my dream centered around a river. In my mind it was avalanche creek. But it looked more like the crystal at high season. It was teaming. I felt young, like a teenager, and there were a lot of my high school friends mixed in with people from work and strangers that were not strangers in the dream.
A small group of us decided to float the river. We hiked up and jumped in. We did not have any tubes or rafts. Just threw ourselves in. In reality, this was a fairly common part of my childhood. But this time, the water was much stronger. It sucked us through its obstacle course of rapids and eddies with great force. There were several times when I was pushed down deep. Pressure, like a waterfall above me, keeping me down. The fear of drowning growing. Feeling the edge of panic. And then making my way back to the surface just in time. When we finally got out, I had the relived but alive sensation of getting off a roller coaster. The danger diminished and amusing in retrospect.
I have very early memories of the dual feelings of calm and awe of power I had around rivers. Dangling my legs in the water. Wading in deep enough to feel its power against my legs, threatening my balance. My mom and aunt would take us skinny dipping in slow muddy pools near the trail head in avalanche. Raspberry picking and slip-sliding along the stream as it passed over slick rock above Chapman. We felt free and dissolved into the scene. Babes in the woods. There was no difference between it and us. Now I wonder if my my mom and aunt felt that way too. They would go in deeper. Float on there backs and dunk their heads under water.
When I was 7 or 8 looking back I guess a lot of things changed my feelings of immortality about that time my mom learned how to kayak and joined the swift water rescue team. I remember watching her practice rolling on a rainy gray day in the town pool. I knew it was something she loved and her sense of her own strength grew.
At high run off season, someone’s baby was swept away. Her not so older sister had been left alone to watch her for a few minutes and the toddler slipped away. My mom joined the search and rescue. They lined the banks of the river downstream and searched, watched, waited. My mom sat on a bridge with a girl in my class who lived just down the river and would later be one of my best friends. They leaned over the railing and kept their eyes peeled for the little body that might pass by. Interestingly, they both became nurses. Also, I never connected this story to the parable told at the Unitarian Church.
The story left an impression on me. Death was well is fascinating. Long before that, I always had a fear of the water. Wasn’t a good swimmer. Dropped out of swimming lessons after quite a few frustrating – and then humiliating summers.
This is the context of the river in my dream. The next day, we came back and the river was full of people. At any one time you could see four or five bodies riding by. There was a little shopping mall beside it. The whole thing felt like being at the ski slopes, like walking through Snowmass Village and seeing people flying by down Fanny Hill. We grabbed some food and ate it beside the water. I remember someone was eating carrot flavored gummy bears and I really wanted to try them. That reminds me, I want to make a carrot cake tomorrow.
We were talking about what to do when you get sucked under. How to stay calm and free yourself from any hang ups. Then suddenly there was an emergency. Someone was missing. They whoever “they” are shut off the a section of the river and diverted it to the side. Then teams of people rushed the wet river bed, searching for clues. They found an empty pair of blue jeans.
The commotion startled me. I started looking around and realized that that the river wasn’t natural. The whole thing was engineered and constructed. My friend Catherine was with me and I whispered this observation in her ear. She smiled and said, there is something you need to know. She said, it is a Steinbeck quote. She is a writer and we always shared a love of literature. And then she said something like this, but in much more beautiful language – Around the corner, half way up the cliff, there is an eagle’s nest. This fledgling is the last fledgling of the season. Of this eagles life. No one is going to push you out of the nest. You have to learn to fly.
Then I woke up. Just writing this last paragraph gave me goose bumps. The pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit together.
Yesterday I saw a girl, laying face down on the pavement, just hit by a car. She didn’t look gruesome, but seemed unconsious. Looked limp like a rag doll. There were lots of people around. No one knew what to do with the minutes between calling for help and waiting for it to arrive. When they came, I waited around to try and see how bad it was. I wondered if they would have to resuscitate. They didn’t. Just put her on a stretcher and I went inside. When I came out later everyone was gone. The street was roped off and there was a small pool of blood.
The eagle and the cliff are a reference to Skyer and my first real fear of death, which is still with me. And for me, somehow connected to the night in the canyon. And the night in our living room. And the Steiner post.
I’m gonna talk to my parents and see if I can clarify a few things. There was a period of time in my childhood when I was really, very unnecessarily paranoid and scared all the time. Was this right after Skyer died? How did I get over it?
And I have been dreaming of my old friend Catherine quite often for a long time. This is surprising since its been ages since we were close. I think I will write her and let her know… Not all of this, which I am not sure has anything to do with her. Just to let her know she is a regular in my dreams. Maybe I still have something to learn from her. Maybe I just did. But why her?
