Dream adventures

Life is certainly an adventure. What happens in waking life can be surprising enough, but if you add in dreams, the drama heightens. If you find other people’s dreams boring, skip this blog. But if you want to see how dreams can up the adventure ante, read on.

I’ve been having a series of rather distressing dreams related to the work I do in the environmental movement.

Dream 1: I was working on a visionary project with other enviros. I was asking questions that revealed, I suppose, my skepticism, about their grand plans. After the meeting one of the men made it clear that my questions weren’t all that helpful or welcome, that they put a damper on vision and enthusiasm. I cheerfully acknowledged, “I am a middle ground (middle vision?) person.” Meaning: I concentrate on the how, not on the what.  But how hard did I want to fight for my viewpoint in this group? How strongly did I believe in their vision? I knew that I would never be part of the visionary elite.

Dream 2: I was on a group tour, cruise, in the territory of the Greek Islands and perhaps other countries. Everything is planned and arranged. But I somehow wander off from the group, make a purchase with my last dollars and get change in some foreign currency, not Greek. I realize I am lost. I only vaguely remember the name of the hotel we would be staying at—Eco something or Echo something. I am on the seashore. I ask a woman how to get to the town, where the group will be sightseeing. She says in English that the town is to the south. I look at the sun and see which way to go. Meanwhile, she points out a small hill across the bay that is glowing from the inside, as if from molten lava. Or is there a village in the crater? I think I want to go there but it is evening and I know I won’t find the group there. She then asks me where I am staying and I say it is Eco or Echo. She stops a woman and asks her to phone the hotel with her mobile, then she leaves. This second woman does not speak English. I realize I am really stranded—not sure about the hotel, unable to communicate, no money. I wake up in a panic.

In both these dreams I feel alienated from the “eco” groups. In the first they don’t appreciate my work and I’m not sure I appreciate theirs. In the second I inadvertently leave the group because of my own inclinations but feel lost without them. I am intrigued by the glowing lava (a different passion?) but I don’t know how to get there.

And then I have a third dream, after reading a fine interview by Terry Tempest Williams of the activist Tim DeChristopher, who went to jail for bidding up oil and gas leases for wilderness lands in Utah to keep them out of the hands of the energy companies—without having the money, of course, to actually buy them. Tim is a kind young radical, kind of Jesus-like, actually. Here is my dream:

I was driving on a country road where I knew a protester was stationed. As I approached the area some cushions I had in my backseat flew up and blocked my windshield. I saw only a flash of the protester’s wooden cross in the windshield and heard a crunch under my wheels. I couldn’t stop. I rounded the corner and came to a halt where another group was gathered under a tree. The protester came there and I apologized to him, told him what had happened. Was everyone ok? Nobody was hurt but his friends had lost some gear. I told him I would give them money. Vic and I looked at the idyllic scene of more protesters. Children were playing in a large sandbox surrounding the tree but otherwise they were in the sun. I sort of wanted to join them but it was too sunny and not my kind of thing to do.

I interpreted this as another alienation-from-the-movement dream. I respected the protesters but didn’t feel called to imitate them. And I could have hurt them.

Why was I having this strong sense of ins and outs with environmentalists, and of always being among the outs? As if it isn’t quite where I belong. Where do I belong? I decided to ask for a dream about where I belong. And got this one last night:

I was moving among the homeless people in an African country. I felt what it was like to strategize on finding a place to sleep for the night, in perhaps a shop doorway—one that seemed more European than African but still I had the sense this was Africa. I accompanied a woman in African dress and we managed to find shelter in what seemed an abandon building. But a European woman found us and actually offered the woman two blankets. I rejoiced with the homeless woman in this kindness, felt the luxury of it.

Despite the pain of homelessness, this dream felt much more positive to me. And among the homeless I felt much more at home than I had been feeling among the enviros—even though I, myself, was not homeless.

These dreams are telling me something I’m not sure I’m ready to hear. I see the glow of another passion across the bay but I’m not sure I’m ready to leave the group and find my way across that bay. But we’ll see what happens next. I am planning a trip to Congo in May. . . .