I am in a large open building like a hangar with a floor of clay. I dig a hole about three feet deep and five feet square into the floor and make bricks out of the clay, using them to build a small house over the hole. When the house is complete I walk down a short ramp to the front door but the doorway is very low so I have to crouch down to get through it. Once inside I suddenly feel claustrophobic and am afraid that I am trapped but I am able to exit without difficulty.

I am standing with two or three other people at the edge of a pit several feet wide and a couple of feet deep in the clay floor. The floor of the pit is soft mud the same shade of gray as the floor of the hangar. To demonstrate that the mud is soft I throw a clay pebble into it, embedding it an inch or two into the mud.

Looking over at the clay house, I see that the house is gone but in the back wall of the foundation is a fireplace. Daniel and a friend are burning a yellow plastic toy truck in the fireplace and the burning plastic is producing a lot of smoke. Because the smoke is toxic I ask someone nearby to tell Daniel's friend to tell Daniel to stop burning the plastic truck.

At the open end of the hanger David is grilling wild vegetables on a flat rectangular griddle. On his left is a leafy shoot like Lamb's Quarters and on his right, a shoot of what I grew up calling Pokeweed. Knowing that the Pokeweed is very poisonous if eaten, I inform David about it then take a bite of it myself. Because it is poisonous I step outside and thoroughly spit it out without swallowing any.

Alicia is opening the door to a nearby building as if to step into it. I call out to her with a question but she seems not to hear me so I go over (perhaps crossing a bridge) and follow her through the door. Inside it is dark and I do not have any interaction with her.

I am standing with Ricardo outside at the corner of the building. We are looking over at a pool or quiet stream where several large (like maybe 20 inches long) fat Brook Trout are swimming lazily with a small school of minnows. The water is about three feet deep and so clear that we can easily make out the markings on both the trout and the minnows, which actually have the same shape and markings as the trout but are much smaller, maybe only 3 inches long. Suddenly one of the trout opens its mouth and swallows a nearby minnow. "That's amazing!" Ricardo exclaims, and I agree with him.

I don't know if I get the point of this dream but I have unambiguous associations with several of the scenes in it. Those scenes refer to hobbies and incidents in my life during the time between my parents' divorce when I was 11 and my graduation from college when I was 24. They seem to share a common theme of exercising my agency in my pursuit of various interests, though there may also be references to the self-hatred I developed during my teenage years.

The clay house which is too small is a reference to a little house I built from scrap lumber when I was 10 or 11 years old. Even when I first completed it I could barely stretch out on its carpeted floor and within a year I had grown too big to easily crawl through the doorway, but at the time I was quite pleased with it. The roof was finished with asphalt shingles, the exterior walls with clapboards and the floor with carpet. I don't know what to make of my claustrophobia in the dream, though my successful exit from the house may be more significant, perhaps symbolizing my emotional and intellectual growth during those years.

Daniel burning the plastic truck represents my burning my plastic ship models when I was 13. During the previous year or two I had built several plastic models of warships from kits, carefully gluing the many pieces together and painting them with enamel paints. That hobby had been followed by a passion for chemistry. I had used my new chemistry set to make gunpowder with which I attempted to simulate naval battles by blowing up my model ships. My dissatisfaction with that simulation may be represented by my concern about the smoke from the plastic truck.
Destroying my ship models may have darker implications, suggesting a contempt for my younger self and my earlier interests and achievements, and probably also the inclination towards self-destruction which I cultivated later in my high school years. Using Daniel to represent myself during that time rings true though I hesitate to explore why.

During my senior year in high school I became particularly interested in edible wild plants. Euell Gibbons + in his book Stalking the Wild Asparagus extolled the virtues of the young shoots of Pokeweed which emerge from the ground in early spring soon after the snow melts. That fit the description of the "Pokeweed" which grew in wet meadows near my childhood home so I went out and harvested some. I boiled it with one change of water just as Gibbons had suggested but when I tried to eat it, I found it so bitter that I could not swallow it but had to split it out, just as in the dream. Later I learned that the Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana +) recommended by Euell Gibbons was not the same plant as the Pokeweed (Veratrum viride +) which I had collected. Mine was poisonous, something I did not know at the time. In the dream I knew that and ate it anyhow, which may be a reference to my occasional thoughts of suicide back then. If so, then spitting it out would represent my failure to follow through with those thoughts. As with Daniel, picturing myself as David with my interest in edible wild plants rings true though I cannot say exactly why.

I associate my pursuit of Darchelle's sister Alicia in the dream with my decision to become a Christian during my freshman year in college. My girlfriend Anne was instrumental in that decision and in the dream, Alicia resembles her. I had a question for Alicia but do not remember putting it into words, nor did I receive any answers from her. I suspect that symbolizes both my failure to understand my real reasons for becoming a Christian and the inability of Christianity to provide whatever it was that I was seeking. At the time I thought I wanted to be good, to become a loving person. Now I believe that I was looking for relief from my self-hatred and self-condemnation, attitudes about myself which Christianity did not relieve but instead reinforced.

An earlier dream about fishing informs my understanding of the final scene in this dream, which I also associate with fishing for large trout in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison during the year or two after college. In those fishing trips I actively engaged in something I both loved to do and was skilled and successful at doing - an effective exercise of my agency. For me being a Christian, particularly the second time around when I became an Adventist, felt like the opposite of those fishing trips. I gave to others the authority to tell me how to live and what to love, effectively giving up my agency. "Let go and let God", as the saying goes. Moreover my own eyes at least, I was not very good at being a Christian. I think that is why I consider it amazing when the trout suddenly just opens its mouth and eats the minnow - an effective exercise of its agency. Actually in the dream it is Alicia's husband Ricardo who is amazed, but I think that I am using him to represent myself as a Christian.