Tag: safety

The Landslide Dream

It began with me as a teenager visiting in a small town. I was going from house to house, slipping between hedges, visiting friends. All the friends happened to be elderly women. One was my great-grandmother. The town was lifted out of the fifties, with small houses, typically white, single levels, with shutters, and tidy yards lined with flowers. I always entered the houses through the back, kitchen door, because that’s where I knew the people would be. And I was always right. They were in their tiny kitchens — smaller than the bathrooms in my house — busy cooking, moving around a small table with four chairs. All greeted with smiles and laughter and offered eagerly accepted food, mostly cookies and donuts.

After, though, I left, and found myself wandering in old homes where no one lived any longer. The further that I went, the less there were of the houses. First absent were the flowers and lawns, and then the walks and the windows. Inside, I found empty, dusty rooms.

I was a little older now, perhaps in my twenties. Soon the houses lost their roofs and doors, their siding. I was out where the hills rose, then found myself in a quarry. A house or building, maybe part of a mining operation, had been erected to one side. Little remained of it except an oddly stout brown wall.

I went through the quarry, clambering over boulders and rocks, scaling short cliffs. I became aware that two children had entered the quarry. They were about eight, blond and fair. One was taller than the other by two or three inches.

I watched them for a moment. They had as much right to be there as me, so I continued my exploring. As I climbed a sheer wall, picking handholds on the sandstone and flint outcrops, dirt and rocks fell over me. I threw myself back and away just in time to avoid a huge granite boulder. I didn’t know where it’d come from; its size astonished and scared me. As I recovered from jumping back and away, I saw a large slab of the wall break free and fall.

Scrambling backward took me to safety. As dust rose, I thought of the children. I saw them about forty feet away. They’d climbed as I had and had reached a ledge. I shouted at them that it wasn’t safe, that we need to leave. Rocks tumbled around them. From my vantage, I saw larger, heavier rocks breaking free above them and called out a warning.

The children slipped into a small crevice about twenty feet above the quarry floor. Rocks fell without striking them. Yellow dust thickened as gravel slid down the cliff. The children were coughing. With more rocks falling around me, I made my way over rocks and stones across the quarry to help the children.

Their rock wall moved in, like it was taking a breath, carrying them in with them. The children disappeared from sight. Dodging rocks, waving away dust, I hurried to find and help the children. A rock taller than them pushed them out of the crevice. As they moved aside, it teetered for a moment before rolling down the cliff, jarring more rocks loose with its thunderous landing.

I was almost to the children. Realizing their danger, they were taking action to get down. I reached them in time to help them to the quarry floor. The walls on three sides were spasming and then stilling. I feared something more catastrophic was about to happen and raced with the children to get out. When we reached the point where we’d entered, we discovered our way blocked by collapsed rocks.

The children were panicking. So was I. Frantic to do something, I saw the brown wall. Crossing to it, I jumped up and caught the top of it. Very carefully, I tilted it backwards into the quarry. I found a huge off-white strap, inches thick and about four inches wide, which reminded me of a fire hose, that I used to help me leverage the wall back toward us.

When the wall was low enough, I directed the children over it. They climbed onto it and slid down the other side. Once they were safe, I precariously balanced the wall. More quarry fell in behind me. As it did, I used the white strap to cautiously climb up and over the wall to safety. When I was done, I pulled the brown wall back up into place and regarded it before moving on.

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The Rescue Dream

I was a younger person, male, bearded. I’d just arrived in a large green valley. Trees climbed the valley slopes. Pleasant weather welcomed us. At the valley’s floor, a river met an ocean.

I’d come to the valley leading people to safety. Now, just after arriving, I was told that they had to be taken away because the valley wasn’t safe any longer. After venting about the change and my belief that the new arrivals wouldn’t be happy, I set about looking for them and informing them the valley was now dangerous. Some were skeptical, forcing me to keep explaining, “I understand, but something has changed and it’s not safe for you here.” Reluctantly, person by person, family by family, people agreed to leave until I was down to one person.

This man was a fisherman. I saw him fishing down on the shore. He wore a red and black flannel shirt, a khaki fishing vest with matching floppy hat, and blue jeans, and was smoking a pipe. As I prepared to go down to him, I saw him get hooked — by his own hook. He was smiling about that, declaiming it as, “No big deal.” Then something began dragging him up and down the beach, back and forth. I have no idea what had him, but it used the hook and fishing line. As I gaped at the spectacle, an old man calmly walked along the beach. Coming to the line, he stuck a stake in the ground and wrapped the line around it a few minutes. The line went taut, stopping the fisherman’s crazy ride.

Dream end.

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The Pigeon Dream

It was a dystopian setting. My wife and I were in a small gray econobox, trying to make our way home. Torrential rains reduced the area to a muddy swamp. Mudslides were prevalent. Confusion ruled and more rain was coming. How to get home, where do we go? These were the things we were addressing to one another when a pigeon appeared.

I don’t recall the exact details but we concluded that this pigeon was trying to tell us how to get home. We got the pigeon into our car, along with our cat, the ginger boy, Papi. I started driving. Every now and then, my wife would tell me that the pigeon is telling us to go a certain way, or I’d look at the pigeon and say, “Look, he’s telling us to go that way.”

We reached our home parking lot. Large vehicles blocked the way. Backing, pulling forward, wrenching the steering left and right, I managed to get around them and safely to our garage. We then all went into the house with our belongings, the cat, and the pigeon. We talked about the pigeon saving us. We didn’t think we’d made it without the pigeon. My wife went to feed the pigeon when it attacked her.

She tried fighting it off and couldn’t. I chased the pigeon away. My wife was shouting, “Get rid of it, get rid of it.” Papi the ginger cat went after the pigeon. I didn’t want the cat to get the pigeon.

The cat had chased the pigeon to the front door. While I didn’t want the cat to go out, I wanted the pigeon out. I partially opened the door but as the pigeon beat its wings and pecked at the cat and the cat tried getting the bird, the door closed. Then, someone, the pigeon hooked the door’s edge with its beak and pulled the door open. I caught the cat, the pigeon escaped, and I closed the door.

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The Déjà Vu Dream

I believe it was a dream. But —

I often enjoy oatmeal for breakfast. Berries, fruit, and nuts are frequently added for taste and nutrition.

A large bag of walnut pieces is kept in the refrigerator (so they won’t go rancid). As I pulled them out, I flashed on the bag falling open. Walnut pieces poured out.

Standing there, I didn’t recall anything like that happening to me, and thought that it was a dream. It seemed so startling real that I looked around to see if any walnuts were in the refrigerator or on the floor.

I remembered then that I’d been talking to someone as I was doing this. Music had been playing in the background. I was aware of the music and recognized it but I don’t know what it was now.

So many walnuts poured out of the back, it seemed like half of the bag had emptied. Yet, when I closed the bag, I was surprised to discover it was still almost full. But the refrigerator drawer had enough walnuts in it to fill another bag.

Whoever was with me hadn’t noticed anything going on, so I said, “Look at this. Look at all these walnuts.”

They asked, “Where’d they come from?”

Holding up the bag, I said, “From this bag. But the bag is still almost full.”

The other came over and looked. “Yeah, that’s something.”

End of dream (or memory).

I am about ninety percent certain that it was a dream. Thinking about it as I finished making my oatmeal, I chuckled to myself. Was I telling myself that I was nuttier than I realized?

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After I typed this out, I saw a photo of a squirrel on the net. The photo triggered a fuller memory. The walnut incident was a dream last night.

After the walnuts had spilled out, etc., the dream continued. I’d gone outside. Two cats were present. One was ours and the other belonged to a neighbor. (Neither are cats that I know/recognize from life.)

My wife and I were trying to keep ourselves safe, along with the cats. To that end, the cats were kept in a  large and hilly fenced yard with many trees, but the cats kept getting out. I kept asking, “How are these cats getting out?” Watching them, I’d discover a secret path or a hole in the fence and block it only to see them out there again, and discover that another secret way existed.

The neighbor’s cat then came in through a secret tunnel with a squirrel in their mouth. The squirrel was alive. I then noticed the yard had many squirrels. I concluded that the cat was going out, finding squirrels, capturing them, and bringing them in. As I realized this, I saw her coming in through another underground tunnel, carrying another squirrel in her mouth.

I told my wife what I was seeing. Then, remembering the walnuts, I rushed inside, got the bag of walnuts, and brought them out to feed the squirrels.

Dream ended.

 

 

 

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Be Careful Out There

If you like to walk, as I do, around your town, be careful. 

Caution and awareness are seared in my head. A friend in another town was walking his dog one morning several years ago. A vehicle killed him and his dog. The driver was never identified.

People get distracted, even drivers. Some don’t like stopping for people in crosswalks. I know it, because they’ve told me. They don’t care about the law, safety, or anything else. Some are too busy with other things. I’ve seen people eating as they drive, talking on their phones, or putting on make-up. Some looked at me as they passed and gave me a nod or a wave. So they see me, but kept going.

Crossing in front of the Jackson County Library in Ashland where Main Street becomes Siskiyou Avenue is the most hazardous in my experience. There’s a traffic light – the final one downtown as you’re going south – about fifty feet in front of it. Leaving downtown frees drivers from the multiple crosswalks, traffic lights, and twenty miles-per-hour speed limit. Now freed, they gun their engines and race up into the twenty-five MPH zone. They don’t to stop again, not when they’ve already had to stop so many times, especially for someone crossing the street in a crosswalk. Better to just miss the person and keep going, right?

Yes, it happens. It’s not fiction or exaggeration.

Perhaps the most disturbing incident this week was the Ashland Police Department‘s car that didn’t stop for me. It was about one in the afternoon. Traffic was light, and it was a beautiful summer day. I was in the southern crosswalk, crossing Main Street at First street. An APD vehicle was approaching. The blue and white SUV was several car lengths away from the northern crosswalk in the center of three lanes. He didn’t stop; he didn’t look my way. I could clearly see him, a white guy with a goatee, with a heavy, burly build, and a receding hairline and sunglasses – but he couldn’t see me (I guess).

When he didn’t yield to a pedestrian in the crosswalk, neither did two other vehicles, both following him, but in two different lanes. Why should they? The APD car didn’t stop, so it must not be the law, or enforced, they probably assumed. Both of the drivers saw me, giving me a look as they passed, with one driver, a young woman in her twenties waving at me.

The APD car didn’t have his emergency lights on. He, and the others, stopped at the traffic light up the street at Second and Main.

So be careful. Lot of people are distracted. It happens. Many just don’t care or don’t want to stop for pedestrians. And many just don’t see you.

Or so they pretend.

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Don’t You Hate It?

Don’t you hate it when you’re stopped behind two other cars, because they’ve legally stopped for a person in the crosswalk, and the car coming up behind you whips into the other land and accelerates to about ten M.P.H. over the speed limit and just misses the pedestrian in the crosswalk?

Yeah, I don’t think the man in the crosswalk was happy, either. Mindful of people being like icebergs, with so much of them hidden out of sight, I wonder what kind of idiot is driving that car.

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