I dreamed I was crossing a parking lot looking for my car. A dense cloud appeared from over a building or wall. I knew it was a toxic pollutant. I held my breath and ran. My car was like a VW minivan, except the dashboard had a panel I had to be lift to access everything. I started the vehicle and as I drove I realized the lot was covered with snow and ice. I wondered about braking as I headed down a ramp the wrong way onto an Interstate, which had a huge swell of ice as clear as glass. As I gently tapped the brakes, the vehicle spun round and round. I was of two minds: enjoy it; it will not end well. During my rotation, I could see a large truck and other vehicles headed towards me, but I was drifting onto the other lanes headed in the correct direction.

The road quickly dwindled to a country lane. At some point, I was on foot. An Asian woman passed me, going the other way. Off to the side of the road, a large dog stared at a deer. I thought I’d better call the dog before it ran off. Then I saw a wolf staring at the dog. Immediately, the two were on the road ahead of me; the woman was behind me. The wolf had the dog’s throat in its jaws. Next to the wolf, there was a pile of wooden stakes of varying lengths, most, but not all, sharpened to a point. I grabbed a 4 inch stake and struck at the wolf, thinking, "I wish I’d taken the time to select a longer stake."

I had a very detailed dream this morning. Chuck (a friend I play volleyball with) and I were walking in a landscape like Tapia Canyon, a fairly common New Mexico landscape of steep brown canyon walls and minimal vegetation. At one point, a trail went off to the right, away from edge of an arroyo we were walking along. I said either route would work for us, so we kept waking along the arroyo, which got deeper quickly. Across the now-canyon, we saw men in waist-high dry grass holding rifles straight-up in the air. There were more and more men as I looked at them. They weren’t shooting, they were gesturing desperately, as if to a helicopter or plane overhead. Closer to the canyon edge but still on the other side, several people, including a woman in a red jacket, seemed to be running, but they were actually being swept toward the canyon edge by water we could not see, or rapidly eroding soil. I looked back to see the red jacket swept downstream in a muddy torrent at the far bottom of the canyon. Chuck and I reached a wall blocking our path; the rock was scored in vertical lines, as if from road construction. I said we have to get up from the canyon edge quickly and scrambled up. I turned to offer Chuck my hand. You can’t pull me up, he said. I’ll help you climb, I told him. Chuck scaled the wall and we both collapsed, breathing heavily, hoping for a moment’s rest. I realized we were on some hard surface, like a floor or a gym basketball court. Water was running shallowly but swiftly over this surface. I also became aware that there was ceiling above us, half our height. I realized this space could fill with floodwaters or we could be swept back out, over the wall. We’ve got to move, I said to Chuck. I found a gap, an absurdly sharp corner far too narrow to squeeze around. I woke up suddenly.

I said that in a dream this morning.

I was driving a car, possibly a convertible, at night, with Merri. We were crossing a big bridge when the car spun 180 degrees and I was driving backward. I had a moment of fear that the car would go off either side of the bridge. Mer said something and I responded that I was just trying to slow down without spinning again (foot off the gas and brake). We crested the bridge and picked up speed. I continued to hold the wheel steady, moving it just enough to keep in the lane. I can’t recall if I was looking in the rearview mirrors or over my shoulder. I yelled, “Lew, pull the emergency brake.” (Apparently both Lew and the emergency brake were in the backseat.) Lew didn’t hear me (maybe he wasn’t there), so Mer reached over the back of her seat and pulled the brake. It didn’t seem to have any immediate effect. We were driving downhill on an urban street reminiscent of Georgetown but without any traffic or pedestrians. We entered an intersection and suddenly the brake took effect and the car turned 90 degrees, but then moved forward on the next street. From an elevated distance, I could see the car was now on fire. Fortunately, the street we were now on was full of firefighters and fire trucks. The car stopped. I got out and staggered past a firefighter and said something to him (thank you?). I fell to my knees on the sidewalk, my face in my hands as I sobbed heavily.