Raptor Mesa

The first part of the dream I remember is running across the dusty orange brown desert in search of a place to take cover before the sun came fully over the horizon. I wanted to stop running and be tucked away long enough for the chill of night to take away my excess heat. I spotted a mesa in the distance and angled over towards it.

The mesa was further away than I thought, but that meant the shadowed side would stay in shadow much longer, so I headed in that direction, waking up a pack of raptors as I ran by their hidden den. They may a sort of odd howling noise and bolted after me. I just kept running, knowing that I was faster than them, and would outlast them. Though they might stalk me for hours if I couldn’t find a route that discouraged them.

That route seemed to offer itself up as a climb to the top of the mesa, or at least near the top. I made my way around to the north side and found a likely crack that rose all the way to the top of the stone mountain. I started climbing, only having to kick one of the raptors back down as he grappled with my foot. When he collided with the ones below him, they all backed away and sang mournfully all the way back to their den. I still kept climbing.

Once near the top, I found a passage through a narrow tunnel into the depressed top of the mesa, I was surprised to discover that it was shaped more like a caldera valley than a mesa. I started down the ridge when I spotted more raptors. I began to head back, when I realized that they were wearing clothing, and had much larger heads than the ones in the desert below. They seemed to come to the same conclusion about me and we compared clothing for a moment before they beckoned be down. I was still wary of their rather large collection of long sharp teeth, but something about them seemed peaceful enough.

The whole dream was sort of Burroughs-like, but without the wildly proficient protagonist. In fact, on that score it seemed more like I was a complete newbie to the world, and had been dropped in place with nothing but a few chocolate bars, a canteen and a pocket knife.

We reached the intelligent Raptor’s village just before the dream ended, it was a series of round, thick-walled domes planted over with tall grasses and under the shade of several very large trees. They had round windows, with a thick bulgy glass deeply set into them. (Which is how I could tell the walls were thick.)

Crash Pad Rental

I dreamed I was at the Dream City Home Depot type store, looking to rent a crash pad for a special effect gig in a play. While I was there I kept looking down at my outfit - just a plaid shirt and Levis, with cowboy boots, and every time I did I could see my handlebar mustache bounce around in the corner of my vision. It was very odd, but I couldn't quite figure out exactly how.

I had picked out the pads I wanted to rent when I overheard some boys trying to figure out how the put the pads together for a wrestling mat. I walked over to where they were and explained how the zippers worked to link them all together without the seams showing, and that they should try to find four mats were the zippers were in good condition, without any rust or missing teeth. I knew that could be a challenge, as the mats were all stacked up in the outside yard.

As I dragged my crash mat to the checkout, I realized what was bothering me about my outfit. I've never owned three color (brown white and black) cowboy boots. The realization kicked me right out of the dream for some reason.

River Jungle

I dreamed that N and I were traversing a jungle. We were following a wolf pack that had just lost its leader. We created an elevated blind so we could observe the pack, figuring this was the night they would choose a new leader. I had collected a number of ropes and metal poles from an abandoned river side dockyard.

I used the poles to make us an elevated platform to keep the predators at bay should they suddenly discover us. During the night, the wolves became agitated and started the process of fighting over the former leaders mate. Somehow a leopard got into the mix, and before the pack could recover its cohesion, it had killed seven or eight of them.

In the morning we went down to find out if there was something wrong with the leopard, other than being dead. It looked like it had been, up to the attack, a young healthy male. There was not even any significant tooth decay or damage.

We had lost the wolf pack, and as we made our way back to the dock I realized that I'd been hoping the leopard would get away, seeings how the wolf pack was quite unnatural this far down in the jungle. The docks were busy, two large freighters and a tug with several barges had tied up over night.

N stripped down to a bikini, intent on trading her favor for decent food. I was flabbergasted, but figured "what ever she wants, we're divorced now." I wasn't even sure how we had ended up on this trip up river together. I packed up the makeshift platform fixings and while she tried to impress the sailors, I lashed together a steel drum raft and headed down stream.