The Final Hike
My face, shirt, and pillow were saturated.
Not because I was afraid or sad about the content of the dream I just had, even though it was pregnant with deep and hidden emotions I had never expressed in reality.
I hadn’t been crying in my sleep. My mind was fully aware. I was in such grief because I didn’t want my dream to end.
The Dream
I was hunting. But not on my own. I was with my grandfather and my cousin, who had both passed away within the last couple of years. What we were hunting was never very clear, but my senses were aflame with everything they could bear.
I could hear their voices as though they were in the room with me. I could smell Pop’s musty old hunting coat that he would pull out of the closet only for hunting season. Justin, who was a college football player, and considerably larger than me, would stop from time to time to freshen up his “dip”, or grab a snack from his backpack.
We hiked together for a blessed time to a place that I could show you on a map at this very moment, and it’s a place I still hunt often.
We bantered back and forth about hunting strategy, as we often did. But then everything got eerily cold and still. I thought nothing of it, as we walked through one pasture, into a strip of timber, and to the edge of a small clearing.
I stepped from the fall leaf litter of the woods into the long, frost-hardened grass of the clearing, without changing stride from our current walking speed. Daylight had turned to deep dusk. After a few steps, a chill shot up my back, and I realized that my grandpa and my cousin had stopped at the edge of the woods.
I cautiously looked over my shoulder and turned painfully slowly, as I didn’t know what to expect after I turned.
There they stood, with blank stares, like sentries. No movement next to the final trees before the field’s edge. I jokingly called to them, “You guys just giving up? Come on.” But my brain was screaming to wake as though you want to from a nightmare you can’t escape, “No!” I fought it, “Dammit! I can’t wake up yet! This isn’t over. Don’t do this to me.” My eyes flickered in the dark of my bedroom, and the first tear fell. My heart felt like it was being slowly crushed in my chest. I took a breath, my eyes closed again and the dream re-engaged. But I was hiking farther from them, and I couldn’t stop.
There would be no more hunts with them. I knew that. I was the only one left. Alone.
I woke with a boulder in my throat. I lay on my back, staring at the fan slowly turning on the ceiling. I looked over at my beautiful wife, completely asleep and oblivious to the war that was raging next to her. My chin quivered, and the dam broke. I lay silently weeping for over an hour.
Significance
In my time studying psychology in school and acting as a spiritual counselor while I was a pastor, I was always taken aback by our mind’s ability to create mashups of real life. It can blend joy and pain, good and evil. Somehow it can make the most peaceful flower rage with color and intensity.
On my hunts today, I carry this dream. When a smell or texture hits me, I’m right back there again. Some mornings, the frost on the grass seems more like razor blades and the smell of autumn makes my stomach hurt. On other days, it’s a perfect balm for my spirit.
The dream runs rampant in my mind like a wild predator. Beautiful, but dangerous. Ironically enough, the instrument that tames it is my son. He takes that Last of the Mohicans’ feeling of being alone and replaces it with memories that dull the edge. His squeezing of the trigger on an animal is like a training blow to the predator that says, “This is what you will be in my dad’s mind. No more, no less.”
As his skill has developed, my memories have become significantly more pleasant.
This wasn’t some sort of Daniel-esque prophecy. I’m simply satisfied with believing it was a summary of what has been; and what is today. No matter the future significance, I don’t think the dream will ever leave me. I still struggle with flashes of it from time to time, especially when I’m hunting that part of the farm.
Dealing with “Alone”
My faith doesn’t allow me to feel ultimately alone. I know that I have the presence of God with me no matter what type of situation I find myself in.
But on a human level, alone hurts. Over time, you become numb to it, but you still get flashes of pain, almost like an old football injury. But I’ve learned to embrace it. I’ve learned to accept the dark, cold walks back to camp with no one to drive over the hill to pick me up. I’ve learned to kneel over a kill with no one out there to immediately tell about it. But those are also the times I like to remember the dream.
Even though I know my late grandfather and cousin are enjoying a place far better, it’s comforting to close my eyes and remember that last walk.
Someday, it will be mine.