Traveling, shipwreck, kidnapping, homicide, exploring

Started out with a lot of traveling dreams. This section ended in a dream where I thought I was not dreaming: I was packing up my gear after a prolonged stay somewhere (a reenactment or other visit somewhere). I was actually managing to get most of it together, and I commented on how I hate “those dreams where I can’t get things packed”.

Then I was picking up mom and Marge at the airport. There seemed to be a lot of people in our group for a simple airport pickup! Too many to fit in Marge’s car. We hailed a huge, limo-sized taxi instead. I had some huge, coffin-sized trunks (I guess I was still coming back from my earlier trip), and Cheryl threw them up on the roof rack(!) of the cab. I told her to “quit helping!”. Even though the cab was huge and full of people so it resembled a clown car, there still wasn’t quite enough room. For some reason we were now in Poulsbo, by the way. It dawned on me that Marge had driven her car to the terminal. I volunteered to drive Marge’s car and take whomever wouldn’t fit. The cab driver insisted that we add another cab, instead, but I told him “No”! What was the point of leaving Marge’s car behind?

They drove off, I think. I was distracted by a boat shop or travel bureau of some kind. Suddenly I was out on the water near a chain of islands in a small sloop/captain’s gig thing. I had my friend LeOnna’s four-year-old daughter with me, and she kept wanting to stand up and otherwise get in the way as I was handling the boat. It was twilight and getting cold, so I wrapped her in my coat and told her to sit down on the floorboards. She jumped up on the thwart again so I shoved her backward into the bottom of the boat. I could see our ship, a medium-sized brig or somesuch, approaching from the south. I was trying to rig the sail because I knew I couldn’t row the gig fast enough by myself. Then I noticed that we were drifting in the current and trailing a long line. Madeline popped up again, just as the line went taught. It was attached to some kind of anchor! The boat swung around and the line swept the deck and popped Madeline into the water. I could see her bright-colored t-shirt under the surface, so I jumped in and fished around until I found her. I held her up and squeezed the water out of her. Now the current was sweeping us away from our boat, which was now anchored instead of drifting. The brig had passed and was sailing slowly to the north, but there was no was I was going to catch it now.

We made it to land somehow, and now I had Madeline’s baby brother, too. At about half his real age of just over a year. We were back to the problem of “getting home from Poulsbo”. It was night, and the light from a nearby convenience store lit the parking lot. Somehow I lost track of Madeline, then I heard a car starting up and I knew somebody had kidnapped her! I saw a white Cadillac-type car backing out of a spot, and I ran to intercept it. The guy wouldn’t stop, so I grabbed the roof rack and climbed up and over and jumped in the open passenger side window. I pummeled the guy and tried to jerk the steering wheel to nose the car into an obstacle and stop it. Somehow I ended up in the back seat. I pulled a gun, but he pulled one as well, so I launched at him. We struggled for a bit and I knocked his gun away somehow. I fell back and, as he turned, shot him square in the chest. He had also stolen $100 from me, so I fished that out of his shirt pocket.

At this point, I think, there’s an interlude where I’m in some police station being booked for the crime of stealing the $100 or something like that. I was very despondent; the money was mine, but now I was going to jail. For some reason the homicide thing wasn’t an issue. I asked if books were allowed in prison, because I’d go crazy without something to read. They assured me books were fine, and that I wouldn’t be alone. I told them I’d be happier alone. “Lock me up in a hole for all I care”, I said.

Back in the dark parking lot, I was holding the baby boy and bouncing him to get him to go back to sleep. My neighbor Paul drove up, and now it was his son, whom I’d been babysitting. Paul offered me a ride home, but let me drive. I was having a hard time seeing. It was night and I couldn’t get my eyes to focus and I had tunnel vision. I asked Paul to help me navigate. He didn’t seem alarmed by my handicap, and told me where to turn. Pretty soon I couldn’t recognize where we were. Was it Lincoln Hill? No, we’re in Silverdale! It was a part of “Silverdale” I’d certainly never seen. Now it was daytime.

We made a turn to the south west and came out on a “T” overlooking a spectacular valley, with steep wooded hills and rocky crags. It took my breath away! There were a few houses along the ridge road we were driving, and I guessed that they must be valued in the millions with a view like that. “Bet you’ve never been out here, have you?” Paul said, laughing. No, I’d never even heard of this area! Somehow it came to me that this was the area behind a cluster of craggy, rocky mountains that I’ve dreamed about in the past, usually placing it on the Olympic Peninsula. We drove down into the valley, the road narrowing and becoming cruder as we descended. Soon it was a rough track, and we came to a spot where two pine trees had fallen over the road. They were high enough to drive under, but there was a short-haired woman in a lab coat there who pushed them up for us anyway. We were now walking, and as we passed under the tree trunks I saw that they were crusted with snow.

To our left, downslope, was the remains of a gargantuan wooden bridge. There were ruined bits of huge logging machinery. Then we were in the midst of a group of people working on towering openwork steel structures, bridges, etc. It was like a science fiction scene, with folks welding and using elaborate robot arms to fasten things out of reach. The whole scene was awe-inspiring somehow. There was even orchestral background music. I was thrilled. The air was cool, here was a group of people working on some communal project in an isolated, spectacularly beautiful valley… for some reason it just made me happy.