I am fishing from shore in a lake near the outlet, a gentle stream about 20 feet wide, and I hook
and reel in a rather gaunt salmon about 2 feet long which seems to have no fight in it. No longer
fishing, I wade across the stream and it is deeper than I expect, maybe about mid-thigh deep. Again
I cross the stream in the same direction, this time through the pool below a small waterfall formed
by a fallen log. The water is much deeper, almost up to my chin, and I hold a mug in my hand over
my head because it needs to stay dry. From the pool I have just crossed, the stream enters a larger
river which runs parallel to the lake shore from which it is separated by a narrow strip of land
reminiscent of Dungeness Spit.
Standing on the riverbank by the pool, I spot a large trout in the pool and intend to wade in and
catch it by hand but I hold off because numerous large branches and broken sections of tree trunk
are floating down the river and could run into the pool, though none do. I pull one of the large
branches out of water and throw it up on the bank. Wading into the pool I take hold of the trout
and wrap my arms around it. It does not resist but it is very large, nearly as long as I am tall,
with typical Brook trout markings - a greenish pattern on the back, small red and silver spot on the
sides and white edges on the fins. I lay it out partly in the water on a measuring tape and again
it does not resist. It is 80 long though I don't know whether the unit of measurement is inches or
centimeters.
I walk downstream along the riverbank nearly to the far shore of the lake. A tent is there and in it
sleeping bags and blankets are laid out the way I used to for the boys when we would go car camping.
Beyond the tent I see a toddler dressed in light blue climbing out of the doorway and down the step,
as if in a home movie. It might be Daniel.
I follow the road back along the strip of land to where I started. Someone on the motorcycle drives
by me doing a prolonged wheelie, hugging the bike as if to minimize wind resistance. At the end of
the road is a small fir tree like a Christmas tree. Someone else, perhaps the motorcyclist, and I
snip off small branches from the tree. I noticed some have already been cut so I pick those up as
well and I take the two handfuls off branches back to the tent and lay them on the bedding to
freshen the air, realizing that the previously-cut branches will not work as well as the fresh ones
but will still help.
This dream does not offer many familiar clues as to its meaning but Darchelle helped me decipher it.
Even so, my interpretation feels like a bit of a stretch, so indulge me.
The opening scene reminds me of snagging a salmon from the Skykomish during my first fall in
Washington. The salmon was approaching the end of its life and nearly spent, but it was very large
by my standards. The trout was even larger but like the salmon, not fully alive. Every fisherman
remembers the large fish and has stories about them; they live on in memory but of course are not
truly alive. Measuring the trout, and the ambiguous certainty of the measurement, suggests how
those stories though very clear may not be very accurate. The pieces of large woody debris floating
down the river could be a metaphor for how memories crowd in from the past when one begins looking
for them, and how they often challenge the stories one has settled on to make sense of what happened
back then.
Stories of the past are like home movies; for me they have taken on greater interest as I have less
time to live. Bedding - going to bed - in other dreams has symbolized dying or preparing to die,
but here the bedding is not primarily for me but for my children, those whom I will leave behind.
The boys themselves are not really present; that probably indicates that my preparations, my
documenting our shared past, is more for my benefit then theirs. I leave everything set up, the
bedding all in place, then return with fresh sprigs of fir, as if returning to previously formulated
stories with fresh information. The motorcyclist balancing his bike on the rear wheel, not for the
benefit of any observer but for his own pleasure in exercising that skill, is part of the process.
It demands complete focus and the coordination of the competing forces of gravity, momentum and
acceleration. Oddly, it reminds me of writing, which for me is the essential tool for exploring
exploits of the past, for reassessing those fish tales.