A few nights ago I had a dream that is still lingering in my mind. I had moved back east. In the dream it was Kentucky, but it looked just like Pennsylvania. I was moving into a simple, pleasant-looking house that sat on the edge of a forest. There was a front lawn that would be perfect for gardening and the woods would offer lots of wild foods and materials for crafting. I was going to be working at a Folk School of some sort. The whole feeling of the dream was one of coming home to my destiny, being where I belonged and doing what I was meant to do. And also of finally being a part of a like-minded community. I felt such deep contentment.

In my mind I can immerse myself in the setting of this dream and when I’m snapped back to reality here by some practical concern like having to move the water in the garden, the whole aura of the dream lingers and I feel like I’m a different person. If I lived in that landscape I would be the fullest expression of myself. For those fleeting moments where I’m transitioning back to reality here I am that fuller self.  It’s beautiful while it lasts, but it leaves such an ache in my heart. For a few moments, the aura of that land gets superimposed on the land here and it feels like anything is possible. I so desperately need to get back home.

The Folk School reference in the dream was interesting—and totally unexpected. It made me realize that a very core part of me is my love of traditional skills and crafts. Also it was clear that this love of mine is an expression of the energy of the whole Appalachian region, as evidenced by the Folk Schools that sprang up there.

Maybe part of my destiny there will be to teach classes. First, I will have to learn all the skills involved in self-sufficiency, but eventually I should have a wide range of hands-on knowledge to pass along.  It would be neat one day to have my own mini Folk School.

Last night I had a strange dream. I was in a forest with some other people in these wildcats chased us up the trees. These were mountain lions, leopards, panthers, etc.—the big cats except these either weren’t full grown or were just smaller varieties of each species—like medium-sized dogs, maybe.  Anyway, there was a person above me in the tree I had climbed so I was blocked from going any higher. A cat climbed up and started clawing at me. I grabbed it by the neck and kept punching and kept punching it in the face and head until it was disoriented enough that I could toss it to the ground. Then another one came up after me. This one I grabbed by the scruff of the neck and swung it around and around in circles to get it dizzy, then I tossed it. They kept coming up and I kept abusing them and tossing them away. In the end I had bloody hands but no other apparent injuries. I sensed that the cats were not going to allow themselves to continue to be harassed but would simply move on to new territory to get away from us humans. I felt sorry that we had entered their territory and forced them out—all I had intended was simply to save my own life.

The dream might simply be a metaphor for what we’ve done to so many animal habitats, but I wonder if there isn’t more to it than that.