Dream

Posted on July 26, 2002 in Dreams

I’m hiking in a national park, one by a large lake or the sea. I’m alone. The trail I’m on is much too rough for Lynn. I creep along the middle slope of a long cliff that is the color of Columbian coffee grounds. The going is by hand and foot. Trail conditions are uncertain. I get to a place where I can’t go any further. Two long fins of rock and deep crevasses block the path. It has taken me hours to get to this spot. A couple of guys come up behind me and grumble about the obstruction. I look around and see a rough path winding down the cooled magma to the canyon floor. There’s a park ranger, some 1000 feet or so down the hill from me. He waves. I scramble down to meet the ranger, arriving instantly. The ranger is out here to fix a chair lift. He can’t fix it because he needs a part. He waves again and leaves to get it. The two guys follow me as I begin to explore a deserted marina. The chair lift takes you across a strait to some islands. “This is Lake Powell,” I think. [But it’s not. The rocks should be red sandstone, not lava flows.] This marina is somewhere up the lake from park HQ. You can only reach it by water (in season) and trail. I go to stand at a point. One of the two guys makes a comment about Clinton. As I look across the water — from Arizona through Utah and into Nevada [impossible from my presumed point], a haze lifts. There’s a fabulous island out there, in Nevada, a place covered by trailers, neon signs, and casinos which are designated by clusters of multi-colored balloons. I’ve heard of this place, but I don’t give it a name. You get there by taking the chair lift or by approaching by automobile from the other side. There’s more than one island out there. I look across the water into the living room of a mobile home. It’s dark inside and the glass is further obscured by the reflection of the corner of a white wall that should be somewhere between me and the mobile home. But there’s only greenish water. I turn away, noticing a pair of bubble gum machines, one selling candy-coated peanuts for 20 cents a handful, the other something else — raw nuts I think — for 50 cents. I check my change and see that I only have pennies. The two fellows catch up to me. One tells me that he came here by the upper trail because his wives thought the exercise would be good for him. He comments again about Clinton and I realize that he isn’t a Clinton hater. I ask him where he is from and he gives me a name that sounds like “Keafton”. “That’s in Utah,” I guess. He confirms that it is. We walk back down the canyon to the park HQ. The trip by the levellower canyon trail takes much less time than the crawling along the cliff face did. We are all pleasantly surprised.