Moving elegantly and artfully through the trees of a most beautiful West Coast Cedar forrest. Playful as a young orangutang.
Swinging and climbing and winding about the second growth trunks, the downward swooping giant limbs. Moving with the grace of wisps of smoke I curled about the dark red bark.
The forrest floor almost entirely absent of foliage, save the odd huckleberry and fern extending out of ancient first growth stumps. Oh those wise and helpful stumps! Even in death they live on in another form and provide care and guidance their community. Do you know these woods? How the the firm roots tangle about your feet like serpents in love, and are hardened, giving the ground a signature hollowness. Pat the ground, with a flat hand, as you would the head of a friendly Brontosaurus, and you can hear the sound and feel the vibration. You are floating on root connections.
Many people I know are here amassed about one of these most lovely volcano shaped stumps. My beloved brother Jordan, and many of his high school class. And I am in my element, as if I was hosting the gathering. There is a massive cauldron of food that I am cooking up, twenty or so metres away from the gathering. One person is helping me with it, I can't recall who, but we are totally on top of it. I dance my way through the tree bows, swing over to the stump where the main body of happy humans are socializing, and collect ingredients from the stump.
Oddly enough the stump was holding a large array of things that I would normally find in my refrigerator, as if I had some method of using the stump to protect items from bears while keeping them cool. And, if you know these stumps I speak of, they are massive, volcano shapes, with the top looking like a jagged wooden kings' crown. A hundred years ago there would have been a flat surface at the top of the stump, where the tree was sadly severed from its lowest ten feet of widening mass that then reach deep into the earth. That severed point, that once-surface, rots away in the middle, leaving a deep hole in the centre of the stump and powerful wooden teeth that come directly up from the earth and form a jagged wooden crown where the flat surface would have once been.
I would walk, with amazing balance, around that top circle of ancient stump-teeth, acting in a very calculated way, knowing exactly what I was doing. When I wanted to open a part of the stump and reveal some of my food items I would shift my weight - from that high-up, balanced position - and the stump-tooth I was standing on would act like an old wooden teeter-totter from my childhood playground, somehow levering mechanically and opening up part of the stump while dropping me gracefully to the forrest floor.
Everything I was doing in this dream was so natural, and I was so happy to be making this huge amount of nutritious food for my brother and his friends. I was so on top of it. Oh, and thanks to the person who was helping with the food! She was so in tuned with what we were cooking-up that we were having a blast!
Oddly enough when I opened the stump I was getting a jug of milk, salt, and mayo. The food in the pot was like a big spicy chilli, and the three last ingredients were the finishing touch. Some essential simmering time would be filled with good hearty laughs and hugs. One gets rather overjoyed when food is almost served. And then we eat.