The Odd Dream

I walked slowly through a forest in Chester, Massachusetts, on my way up to a rocky lookout that was visible from the main road. I had located a trail that started as a path around a wooden barrier marking the dead end of a local neighborhood street. The tall, thin aspens showed off their dresses made of a million waving sun-bright yellow leaves. The path ahead entered a small circular clearing. I searched the clearing and saw a thinning of the vegetation continue across in almost a straight line. It was all extremely vivid. I felt a chill, like someone hidden in the forest was watching me.

I woke early one winter morning blinking my heat-dried eyes. When I stepped into the bathroom a different world surrounded me in a small, empty room. Pale blue walls incorporated nothing. Instead of the usual sink and mirror I looked only into a large, rectangular frame, a bit larger than the standard exterior window frame. The space enclosed in the rectangle possessed the flat reflective quality of a large, clean mirror. However, shockingly, I did not see my reflection looking back at me. Instead, I saw the back of my head. Certain that it was the back of my head and not someone else's, I squinted to search for detail and greater certainty. What I was looking at must be impossible. I thought there was another person, myself exactly, standing on the other side of a magical rectangle and looking in the same direction as myself. A moment of intense fright became mystification and then curiosity. What is this, really? It must be that I am dreaming. But what an amazingly vivid dream. It was all so real.

My phone jingled and buzzed when I was sitting in front of the television. The screen was blank black because I was just about to turn it on.

I answered the call and said "Hello."

The voice on the other end, which sounded a lot like mine, said "Hello."

I asked, "Who's calling?"

"Who's calling?"

"Hey!" I raised my voice a bit, "Big Joke. Is this Travis?"

The caller's voice got a bit louder: "Hey! Big Joke. Is this Travis?"

Then I grew anxious, thinking back to the incident with the window-mirror.

My mind raced. This is similar, isn't it. A reflection of myself that is not really a reflection, but a duplication. What is this about? First I see myself, then I talk to myself. What kind of a phone call is this? There must be an explanation. There is an explanation for everything.

I asked, "Why are you calling?"

The voice responded: "Why are you calling?"

"Look, I'm sorry. Maybe you think this is fun but I have lost interest in spending my time this way."

"Look, I'm sorry. Maybe you think this is fun but I have lost interest in spending my time this way."

I ended the call.

They did not call back. Or, maybe I should say I did not call myself back.

The next afternoon, I had some time on my hands so I decided to go for a walk.

I stepped out my front door, walked the few steps to the sidewalk, and then suddenly proceeded to face east and walk backwards. Astounded, my brain searched desperately for an escape from the feeling that I was a machine subject to external controls. I looked forward and saw a circular space to my left that I quickly discerned was like a mirror showing what was behind me as I walked backward toward the objects in the mirror. This is interesting, I thought. Although walking backwards, I adjusted my orientation quickly and moved along at a decent pace. After focusing on my reverse progress for a couple of minutes it struck me that other people must see me, walking like a lunatic backwards but without bumping into anything. If I had been walking a dog, the dog would be in front of me walking backward also but sort of behind me like I was dragging the dog backward over the sidewalk.

This is interesting, I thought, but crazy. Am I going to be arrested? Will someone stop me to ask if I am okay?

What the hell is happening? Am I some kind of a street mime walking backwards to entertain tourists?

I noticed that my path seemed to be exactly the opposite of the walk I took two days ago. That time I walked normally, forward. But I seemed to be tracing the path exactly, only backward. I ended up back in front of my house and like a bolt of lightning I realized that I had indeed completed my previous walk backward, as though it had been a mistake that I wanted to erase. If a person goes for a walk and then goes for exactly the same walk backward does that mean the walk is erased? Is that walk, and that time, erased from the record of your life? Am I going insane? No one even spoke to me. Everyone who I passed by, either on my side of the street or the opposite side, said nothing. Just barely looked at me, as though it were perfectly normal for a person to be walking backward down the street. This must be a dream. I went inside and sat. I stared at the bookcase. The books look real, I thought. But this must be a dream, an extremely vivid dream. Otherwise, I am nuts.

I stood at the top of a cliff. My body was covered with feathers. No clothing, just feathers. Not a feather suit. My feathers!

I felt the strong updraft coming. Captivated by the dark-green spruce forest across the valley, I leapt upward and out into space. Floating on the wind, gliding slowly downward, wonder overwhelmed me. Then fear. I cannot fly. I am a human being. How could I possibly fly? I tried flapping my wings but they did not lift, did not promise to keep me airborne. I felt my feathered body get heavier, soar downward toward the hard earth. Then a new strong breeze caught my winged arms and I glided safely to stand on the branch of a dead hemlock. Surveyed the beautiful valley.

I did it, I thought. I can fly. That's good. It felt good. But it must be a dream. This cannot be real. I have tried to fly in many dreams before, but always failed. Why did I succeed this time? I felt pleased but surprised. Not sure I trusted what had just happened. It must be just a dream. Or, it is a dream that means something.

Speaking of dreams, I stepped into the clearing and was immediately caught in a storm of yellow aspen leaves. They fell exactly like giant snowflakes, blown on a slant pushed by the breeze. The leaves piled on my hatted head and my shoulders. I was being covered by a snowfall of aspen leaves. This might be an act of God, a blessing to me, for me, on me. I felt blessed; I felt lucky. This was not a dream. This really happened. Years later, I was lucky again. Blessed again. Climbing a small mountain in Wallingford Vermont, called "White Rocks," with my two young sons and my wife. In the moment that we stepped on the summit lookout, open to a vast valley sloping south, we saw the sky filled with a billion Monarch butterflies. A butterfly migration, absolutely silent. Had we closed our eyes we would have heard nothing. But we kept our eyes opened, paralyzed by the wonder before us, this indefinable blessing, a valley filled with a billion butterflies. Like aspen leaves that will not fall. That must have been God speaking to us, not with words, but with all the things of the universe by which The Great Spirit speaks. That was not a dream. That really happened, as vivid as an extremely vivid dream.

A week later I was driving down a country road wondering what was happening to me. Was I losing my ability to distinguish between dreams and reality? Mental illness can develop gradually. First the white rabbit, then the Cheshire cat. Something ahead stepped from the left shoulder into the road. It looked like a pheasant. No, chicken. I saw a chicken crossing the road. Noticing a pull-over space on my right, I got off the roadway and stopped to watch the chicken complete its leisurely stroll across the road. My brain asked me, really, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Then my brain searched more urgently, like a panic: Are you kidding me? Why did the chicken cross the road! What the fuck? How could this happen?. Did I just imagine a chicken crossing the road? Am I having one of my vivid dreams? The chicken finished her fun trip and disappeared in the brush on the right. Briefly, the chicken returned, stood briefly on the right shoulder and then proceeded to walk back not backward thank God back across the road to the left side where it had started, and disappeared again in the brush.

Where did this chicken come from? Escaped from a local farm, or backyard? Why me? Did I really see this or am I hallucinating? Why did the chicken cross the road? Why did she walk back and cancel her trip? There is an explanation for everything. I pondered this challenging question. Not much changes between the left side of a country road and the right side. But what if the chicken did not cross the road but instead walked down the road? Then the chicken would be walking toward something, something ahead, something in the future, something new. This is an entirely different question, with volumes of possible explanations. Why did the chicken walk down the road? Good question. Brave little chicken. Am I insane or blessed? I proceeded to drive home, or dreamed I drove home. It was all so vivid.

- end-