I am in a parking lot by a river when a man walks up to me and asks if he can use by phone, which is sitting on the passenger-side mirror of my car, to take a selfie. He is a fairly big man with short hair and dark gray skin or hair around his mouth and chin, but he seems friendly. I let him use my phone, then he asks me to send the photo to him. While I am figuring out how to do that, he walks away and Darchelle walks down from the road into the parking lot.

Darchelle and I drive up the road and make a sharp left turn up onto another road. There is slush in the road and on top of it, a long length of iron pipe sitting lengthwise in the middle of the road. Recalling that last time I was able to position the driver's side wheels of the car to ride on top of the pipe and flatten it, I try to do that again but the pipe just rolls harmlessly to one side.

We arrive in front of Overlook in Jackson. The snow is about two feet deep but it is melting and a clear meltwater stream has cut a channel down the driveway and onto the road. I can tell by the soggy snow banked up on either side of the channel that the stream has previously been dammed up by snow. Just for fun, I break off clumps of snow, which is layered like a wedding cake, from the edge of the channel to dam it up again. Daniel and David are also playing in the stream, just downstream from me, and just beyond them is a low rectangular table like a coffee table with a notebook of handwritten bird sightings in it. When the pool above the snow dam is almost deep enough to go over my boots, I break the dam and the water floods down the channel, just deep enough to cover the birding notebook.

The man reminds me of Shawn S with whom I used to work at Expedia, which I believe sets the timeframe for the dream. Shawn was an early adopter of Internet and phone technology, creating an association with Darchelle who, when She came into my life after I left Expedia, impressed me by her frequent voice-texting and selfies.

Driving with Darchelle represents our relationship but also contrasts with my stationary position in a parking lot in the first scene. With Darchelle I am moving forward, growing and changing, after a long period of being being stuck emotionally. The iron pipe which serves to channel the flow of water symbolizes my earlier relationship with Susan, which felt constrained to a limited range of interactions by my fear of triggering her anger. Attempting to flatten the pipe may represent my efforts to deny the importance of that relationship to me, or alternatively to prevent that type of relationship from developing with Darchelle. The pipe rolls to one side, indicating that the negative impact of my earlier experience on my relationship with Darchelle is limited.

Snow in my dreams has often served to emphasize that I am dying (winter = death) but in this dream the snow is melting as it does in early spring in Jackson, a hopeful time of new growth. The snow, like the iron pipe, may represent the constraints and the inability to grow which I felt during my marriage to Susan but in the third scene of the dream clear meltwater has cut a meandering channel through the snow, suggesting that I am now free to express my feelings and to grow in my marriage with Darchelle, symbolized by the snow layered like a wedding cake.
The meaning of the scene with Daniel and David is not completely clear. The pool of water almost too deep for my boots and the subsequent flood when I break the dam may represent ALS, as I thought when Darchelle and I analyzed this dream together. Returning to this dream now, several months later, I think they may instead represent the impact of my love for Darchelle on my life and the lives of my boys. The feeling is playful rather than threatening and the flood envelops my bird notes (written during my past life apart from Susan both before and during our marriage) but does not wash them away.