As a young teen I embarked on keeping a dream journal.  I did so partly because a friend of my sister who was into all sorts of interesting things to me said it had helped him to become more aware of his dreams.  The other reason was because my life had been littered with the most unusual dreams.  It seemed like a good idea to keep track of them, maybe learn something from this world I spent so much time in each night.  Dreams were a release from the mundane, permission to enter into improbable realms of possibility. I also had noticed that some of my dreams would come true.  I had them about births and deaths and even world events.  I was curious about this other world right under my nose.  So I began my dream journaling, trying to be as devoted to jotting down anything I dreamed no matter how unusual or different or hard to explain or relate in the written word.

So for about fifteen years I kept a dream journal.  From seventh grade all the way through college and a few years beyond I did this.  Along the way I found I had a complete history of all the dreams that had come true and was able to find some interesting correlations that these dreams had with the lunar cycle (of all things).  I also found that some dreams that seemed entirely fantastical may have had a rooting in things I did not at the time know too much about.

Like the dream about the Orca.  In the early 90’s while on my own and fresh out of college, I had this dream that was itself delightful and magical.  It had, though, some elements that would take about two decades to realize may have been tied to something that I did not at the time know anything about.  You will see as I explain the dream….In it, I am standing on the shores of a lake in what seems like an alpine setting.  I say this because that is how it all struck me.  The trees that were near the shore of this “lake” were all fir trees.  No deciduous trees at all.  There were these large rounded black stones that came down to the water and turned into smaller stones, all round.  This was a cove and it was at night.  I was standing at the shore looking off into the distance when I noticed I could hear something in the distance.  I was hearing the sound of some kind of cetacean coming up for air.  You could hear the powerful explosion of the animals blowing air and water up into a spout as they cleared their blow holes and took in large lungfulls of air.  This was the first sign that something was coming my way.

I didn’t see much for a bit, but a pod of Orca were coming my way and as they entered into the cove, I could see their bodies beneath the surface of the water.  they were rubbing agains tthe stones and swimming around in what I took to be play.  I found myself stepping into the water.  As I moved into the water, I felt the Orca all around me.  I felt no fear near these massive creatures and in an instant I found that I had submerged into the water completely and had gone off with them, an Orca myself.  It was a dream that I often thought about as one of “those” dreams that stand out.  For years.

Now fast forward into the internet era and a friend has been telling me about the San Juan Islands off the Coast of Washington.  The next day a client comes into the studio and begins telling me about her trip to an island called Orcas which was near the San Juan islands.  Too spooky.  I look into video of this area to see what it is like and I find a video taken in a cover just like in my dream on the island of Orcas and what I found was that it was exactly like the scene in my dream right down to the fir trees, the stones, and the effect that the water had of looking like it was a lake, not the ocean.  Orcas, you see, is a horseshoe-shaped island whose shape counters the normal effects the ocean has of sending in waves.  There are many coves like this on Orcas and this effect gives the shoreline the look of a lake instead of an ocean.

Many years later I saw an identical image from a dream many years previous that had me wondering why on earth I would dream of Orcas living in fresh water.  this never made sense to me….that is until I saw the videos taken on Orcas.

Two years after this dream my daughter told me that she had a dream about how someone had walked up to her and explained that I should always wear the belt buckle that I so often wear that is a cropped image of an Orca whale done up in the style of the Kwakiutl.  I have worn this for a number of years after finding it at a craft fair.  I bought it because it reminded me of the dream I had had many years before.  My daughter had seen the buckle many times but didn’t know what it meant.  I had not told her about my dream about the Orca.  I smiled and turned to her and said “You know, that’s really interesting that you should say that….” and I went on to tell her the story of the Orca in my dream and about having seen Orcas island from afar on Youtube.

I convey this story because I think it helps to underline how our dreams can be more than what some have tried to make them out to be, which is more like the ramblings of the mind as it just creates chaotically.  I have always felt that dream time was always so much more.  After you have a few very specific dreams come true, it is enough to pique your interest and suggest that there is something more to all of this night-time activity.  At least in my life, this is so.  And in dreams, I think that as you become more aware of your dreams, you will tend to remember your dream more often.  Sometimes, by writing them down over long time periods you can begin to see pattern emerge and you can see what kinds of things you have been dealing with from a different perspective.  Dreams can be more than just the mind out for a rambling stroll.  Sometimes I think they can tie us into larger issues that we seem to be aware of even if we are not consciously aware of them.

For me, water has always been important.  I was born under its sign as a Pisces.  I grew up in Florida where I had access to rivers and ocean and the Gulf.  Water was for me and my siblings, a form of freedom.  You could hop in a boat and go on an adventure.  When I moved to the mountains of Virginia, we lived just a few miles from the most magical stretch of river you could imagine. People used to come and comment on how wonderful it was.  As an adolescent, I traveled the creeks and scrambled over the small tree-sheltered springs in my mountain home which bore frogs and creyfish and salamanders. I suppose if I were to choose how I were to come back, it would be not as a human but as a dolphin or whale.  Perhaps, better yet, an Orca.

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