Time, Elks, Dreams . . .

I have a vivid dream life, always have; dream in color, sing, sounds, scents, fly, sleep paralysis, OOBEs. . . I've even had a couple of dreams where the dream was in color, but little pieces were in black and white. One dream I recall: the dream was in color, but I was watching a black and white TV. But I've never had dreams where I had missing time or amnesia in the dream; until recently. A few months ago I had missing time within the dream, and last night, I had a similar episode within a dream.

Much preceded the missing time, or amnesia, too personal to post but at one point, I was leaving my place of work and found that all the roads had been torn up. Earth moved into huge piles, gravel everywhere, dirt roads... no signs. "Great," I thought, "how the hell am I going to get to where I'm going?" but I had no choice, so start to drive. A hassle but not a big deal. But at the end of this torn up road is a crazy network of freeways. Just dozens of on-ramps and freeways and hundreds of cars just zipping every which way, and no signs. Not a one to tell me where to go, how to get there. . . and I have no time! No light or anything just have to MOVE, now! So I make a decision in my panic and just drive like mad onto an on ramp, no idea at all where I'm going.

After awhile of driving crazy-mad the freeway insanity ends and I find myself on one of my "dream scapes" -- a one lane, one way highway or bridge over the ocean. The ocean is a beautiful royal blue color. The water is almost as high as the bridge/freeway, and it's churning. Very active. I am scared and nervous. Still no idea at all where I'm going, no signs The bridge/freeway goes on forever, I can't see anything ahead. The water is so high it's splashed onto the road, and I'm worried I'll slide right off into the water. All I can see on either side of me is water. There's a railing about four feet high on the sides of the bridge but it's little protection.

Next thing I know, I wake up in a funky small motel room. No idea how I got there. I'm wearing a large baggy tee shirt and underwear but that's it. I walk outisde, confused -- where am I?! I see it's a little coastal town, hilly, kind of funky but in a comfortable, easy way. I'm in the "poor" part of town but as I continue walking, find myself in a more habitated part of town. I go into a little cafe, order breakfast. It's very good. I tell the people there, who are very friendly, that I barely know who I am, let alone how I got there or why, etc.

I was thinking of this dream all day, and for some reason, that led me to remember something that happened when i was about twelve or thirteen. I was in the Girl Scouts, and we went camping in Northern California. Here we were out in the middle of nowhere, or so it seemed to me. I loved it though.

I've thought of the following experience many times, but only remembering the wonder of what I saw, not how I got there in the first place. We were all setting up camp and then, I took a walk. I was just walking around, in the woods. And came out on a road. So I'm standing there on the side of the road, and less than ten yards from me, directly across from me, an elk walks out from the trees and just stands there on the side of the road. I was in awe; this was the first time I had seen anything like this. I remember just standing there, looking at this beautiful creature. I wasn't scared, just amazed. I felt like crying, it was so beautiful. We just stood there, looking at each other, then it walked off.

What's surprising to me now, is that even though I've often revisited this memory of seeing the elk, some obvious things about this event never occurred to me -- until now. For one thing, I can't see the adults in the group allowing anyone of us to just walk off on our own. Yet apparently I did. I was all alone. And what road would that have been? No idea; it wasn't one we were on. I don't remember what happened before that, or after. All very strange.

Layers of memory. One "real" memory with no surrounding context, one missing bit of memory within a dream. Shifts of memory; no experience dreaming of having missing memory within the dream, and suddenly, two within a few months time.

Maybe age has something to do with the dreaming; I can't explain why it is I don't remember what happened before, or after, meeting elk on the road. . .