Snake cave

I slept in this morning, having stayed up late writing last night. I woke up talking when Rob nudged me for first call. I’m sure he just loves it when the first thing I do before I even open my eyes is start rehearsing my dreams to him! I told him about one and while I was telling that one, the remembrance of an earlier dream came to me, so he got to hear two in a row. Here's the earlier of the two:

I was in the middle of some kind of active course of study. I was in between experiences, and was anticipating the start of the next. I was supposed to making my passage underground through a long, dark tunnel--a cave really. The point was to get safely through from one side to the other, to come out again and then go on to another experience. My sister-in-law, J., was there with me, and we would be going through the black cave at the same time. I remember looking over a field and remembering that I’d seen a “hobbit hole” before where someone lived who could help us. That part of the dream is fuzzy now--I think I pointed the hole out to J., which looked like a manhole, and we may have even gone down into it for a short visit. Someone, maybe it was the person in the hobbit hole, told me that there would be almost no light in the long tunnel and that there would be many snakes on the walls and on the floor. It was certain that even if we were very careful we would still find our hands and feet on these snakes at times and that we would have to shake them off of us right away to keep ourselves safe. There was no mention about whether these were poisonous snakes or not, just that they were everywhere. We found the place where the tunnel began. I tried to determine from above the ground by surveying the field where it might lead to and how long it might extend, but I couldn’t, not beyond the first few turns. J. was nonchalant at the outset, but I knew in my mind that once we got into the tunnel and started travelling, it would become terribly frightening and that J. was going to freak out in a big way, lose her head, and give up self-control, and that would put us both in great danger. I really didn’t want to travel with her, knowing that I would have to shoulder the burden of getting us both through there without her cooperation. I wanted to talk to her about it, but knew it wouldn’t do any good; at the moment she was unfluffed and not interested in imagining what might happen. My wish was to step carefully and gently, and to quietly move along as quickly as possible so as not to rouse avoidable peril. I stooped down a little way from the cave entrance and peeked into the darkness. I considered the possibility of taking a strong flashlight with me to make the way easier but then realized that would be against the rules of the course. As I peered in I noticed that it wasn’t totally pitch black inside; there were a very few tiny and scattered points of light on the rocky footpath. I felt some small relief over that, for at least there would be some little way to get bearings and not have to totally rely on feeling our way through. I tried to prepare myself for the terror that would surely come to us and to think about what I would do when the snakes were on me. I thought, ‘If we just keep moving, eventually we’ll be finished with the course. It won’t last forever.'