A walk in the forest

A couple of weeks ago, I was out having pho with my friend Coco, an almost weekly tradition, and she said she dreamt about me. Coco often makes cameo appearances in my dreams too, so I guess its not that unusual, but this time she says we were out walking in the forest. Now that is weird. I might make the occasional foray into a wooded area provided it's not uphill. I was a girl scout, I went to camp as a kid, but Coco? No. She is a city person through and through. The likelihood of the two of us walking around in the forest is up there with me going snowshoeing for kicks (read: never never ever happens). So she says we were just walking in the forest and then it got really really dark and then she woke up. Short dream...but jam packed.

On the way back from Cove, we had to cross the mountains at night. S drove for the first few hours, but then she got tired and her contacts were irritating her, so we switched. When I was in high school, I had a physics teacher who taught us about velocity and momentum by showing us videos of car crashes...with test dummies of course, but even so, after that I was never really that interested in driving. I wouldn't have even gotten my licence, but my Dad made me when I turned 18. Since then I have only had 2 cars: a beat up 14 year old Chevy whose gears I stripped while learning the art of stick shift, and a Honda Civic that they made me get in Japan in order to get from school to school. Oddly enough I was great at driving on the left side of the road. I even got my Japanese licence (a story for another day). In fact I have 3 licenses, but I don't own a car, and I haven't since 2003...which means mostly I spend most of my time walking or waiting for the bus. If, by some fluke, I have to drive, it's usually in the city. On the road home from Cove I discovered I hate driving in the mountains at night.

It was pitch black. No visible moon, no stars, no street lights. I am not generally afraid of the dark, but I am afraid of driving into blackness. I haven't been that scared since the time I watched the Shining with a co-worker and he hid in the crawl space of the building we worked at then literally jumped out of the wall onto me. The roads were curvy and steep and the whole time I couldn't help but think of Sue's mom looking into my eyes and imploring me to drive safely. So I took a deep breath and kept my brights on. I focused on following the paint on the road and for a while I was okay, until the paint disappeared. Everyone else was sleeping.

I decided it was good time to pray, so I called on God and my spirit guides or whatever forces kept me from being killed in Thailand (another story for another day) and after about 5 minutes, S and C woke up. S felt better and we were less than an hour away from home, so we switched places, but for the next two days every time I closed my eyes I saw and felt the road. Was that my forest? A dark night on a mountain road? Or is the forest how fearful I've become of every little thing? I used to be bold. I know now that time is finite, I've learned this lesson well, but now I'm afraid I won't get to do the things I want to do and more importantly, the things I am supposed to do. And this fear is debilitating. I want to be brave again, brave enough to walk into the darkness of the unknown and shine my own light.