I am wading down a river with two other people, perhaps my sons, or perhaps two young women. The water is clear, flowing sometimes in shallow riffles over warm brown cobbles and sand and sometimes into deep channels or pools. I might be fishing, I'm not sure. At some point my two companions want to continue but I feel a need to turn back so we do. I walk ahead of them through mud and snow along the bank of the river because my feet are uncomfortable from walking on the stones in the water. As I continue my companions fall farther behind and the snow becomes a large snowbank hollowed out inside into a long tunnel.

Proceeding deep into the snow cave, I stop when ahead of me I see the silhouette of another person. Fearful that they might be hostile, I do not want them to notice me but they do. There are two of them and they approach me in the darkness, each of them holding a crude spear made from a pocketknife lashed to a long stick. I see that they are just boys, probably not even teenagers, but anxious to placate them anyway I explain that I didn't intend to intrude on them and I will be careful not to mention to anyone else that I found them in here. I do not want them to realize that I am afraid of them so I try to keep my voice pleasant and casual. They do not seem to know what to do with me and they do not say anything.

A side passage in the cave runs out a short distance to open into a wide sunny pasture. We go over to the opening and see a small plane taxiing to a stop just to our left and a helicopter hovering out in front of us. I am concerned that the helicopter might be looking for us but I am not sure about that. Something made of a silvery metal, possibly a piece of the wing of a plane, glides across the opening in front of us. It is possible that the plane crashed but I'm not sure.
Looking for a way to continue my trip back up the river, I ask one of the boys if it is possible to walk across the pastures outside the cave but they tell me that it is not. Looking out I see that there would be fences and hedgerows to get through but it does not appear as difficult as the boys said. Returning into the cave, I meet a man climbing down into the cave from an opening in the wall across from the side passage. I break off a small stick which was partly blocking the opening then climb out through it to find that, to my surprise, the river is directly below me, a drop of maybe 30 feet. It is scary to consider falling off and clear that I cannot proceed that way.

Instead I continue along the passage through which the boys had come to meet me. The passage opens up into the interior of a small house with walls made of wood and mullioned windows admitting bright daylight. A man is standing by an open doorway at the far corner of the room, through which it is clear that I (we?) can leave and continue up the river. The man asks me about Andy and Ellen so I explain that they do not live where we do because it is too cold and damp for them.

What interpretation? I don't really have one, but let's see...
Walking down the river and wanting to turn around while my companions want to continue reminds me of times birding with a Darchelle when she wants to stay out and I want to go home. The reference to birding is reinforced by the mention of our birding friends Andy and Ellen at the end of the dream. In the context of birding, the encounter with the boys might represent meeting other birdwatchers and visiting with them while we are out in the field. I tend to feel a slight apprehension about encountering strangers, even other birders, while we are out, so I can imagine picturing them in dream imagery as initially appearing hostile but subsequently turning out to be harmless.
The man with the two boys could be another interpretation of myself with my two companions; by the end of the dream, both the two boys and my two companions seem to have disappeared. Like me, the man is slender, but I don't have much of a sense about him other than that. His home is in a snowbank, except that the snowbank also seems to have vanished by the time I reach the room at the end of the tunnel, the room full of light at the end of the tunnel.
Snow in my dreams has often represented death or end-of-life, or has at least set the timeframe as the end of my life. Snow which disappears may represent moving psychologically from perceiving myself as dying to perceiving my life as continuing - living with ALS as opposed to dying of ALS. The snow shows up in the dream after I turn around and start back up the river. It could be that going downstream represents life with Susan and returning upstream represents a return to exercising my agency in choosing to be with Darchelle. Entering the darkness of the tunnel and encountering the boys with spears like ones I might have made as a boy may represent the challenges of finding my way psychologically through that life change. The spears might even symbolize the self-critical attitude (self-hatred in psychological terms) which I adopted as a boy after my parents' divorce and which I retained throughout my marriage to Susan. At the end of the dream, after several false starts (a crash that didn't happen, a fall I didn't experience, both possibly representing thoughts of suicide), I have emerged from the tunnel into the light of day. Whatever that means, it's a positive message.