Dreaming Again

October 2016: We spent a weekend this fall hiking in Bishop. The scenic forested hikes and talk of possible wild animal sightings seem to have prompted the following dream:

Dream: I emerged from a rustic hotel, stepped outside into a sunny day and took several steps into the parking lot as my eyeballs adjusted to the brightness of the morning. Just then I spotted a momma bear 40 feet away. Luckily she wasn’t interested in me, she was watching her bear cub, and it was getting dangerously close to a pair of hotel patrons. I wanted to call out warning them to back away, but I didn’t want to rile up momma bear with my wailing, so I turned to return to the safety of my hotel room. But now I noticed two juvenile bears, not exactly cubs, between me and the hotel room door. One bear was sitting on the ground eating something and was, thankfully, ignoring me. Then there was the second juvenile bear, this one was walking upright wearing pajama pants! It, too, was ignoring me, walking away. Digesting the confusion of the pajama bottom-wearing bear I took a few steps in the direction of the hotel’s door. I turned back to check on momma bear’s status, am I going to make it to the safety of the room? Sadly, no, she was upon me with a vicious snarling mouth. I awakened while she was in mid-leap nearly upon me before her abuse could commence.

November 2016: We spent a long weekend in Death Valley last month hiking its interesting terrain in the absence of the peak summer heat. When we travel I share a bed with my son. It was under these circumstances the following dream transpired.

Dream: My son and I were enjoying the afternoon walking on a sidewalk in a tree-shaded residential neighborhood. A dog arrived on the scene, not vicious, but was vigorously sniffing at my feet. So vigorous, in fact, was the dog’s snuffling that I had to stop walking so as to avoid kicking the noble beast’s snout. I noticed then that I wasn’t just stopped, my feet were effectively anchored to the sidewalk. Were my feet frozen to the ground?

At this point I woke up to find that my slumbering son was lying diagonally in bed and his feet had jammed my feet firmly into the tightly bound bed sheets. My feet in real life, to match the dream, were actually immovable. They were stuck between his feet and the tucked in bed sheets to such effect that my dreaming self had to stop his own feet from moving. It was with much chuckling I recounted this dream to the family during breakfast. By then my feet had regained the ability to move.