It was, at once, the most innocuous and the most affecting dream I’ve recently had.

I dreamed it was a cool predawn day. I was climbing a mountain. I don’t know what mountain. I went alone.  Wearing the hiking boots and shorts that I often wore back in the early nineteen nineties, I mostly walked, but sometimes I had to crawl, or pull myself up. Sparse, large pine trees were sometimes encountered, and the wind sometimes blew, but it was silent.

The sun was rising. I grew hot and sweaty as I climbed, sometimes pausing to rest and look around. I don’t know why I climbed, but I reached the peak at sunrise, and stood, looking around. The wind blew more sharply. The rising sun illuminated some storm clouds to the east, and was warm on my face, while I saw the final stars of night to the west. Now what, I wondered.

When I awoke, I felt like I’d been crying. It wasn’t relief, pain, happiness or sorrow. The tears felt more like…tension.

Like I’d been expecting something else, and still waited.