Dream Journal: 1 minute read
1/3/24
Nestled in the stream’s hallowed bed, people enter the world as salmon. The salmon people come here to weave their baskets. To live a story is to weave a basket.
A lucid brook gurgles over and around smooth gray stones deep in a wild coastal wood. Towering ancient trees stand guard over the water’s cool eddies. In the shelter of their canopy, moss and licorice fern, sword fern and salal spread a verdant blanket. Fungi weave the nerve-grid and vasculature of the forest throughout its rich dark soil. Far overhead a watchful raven passes.
The earth on which I sit is a spongy mat of fir and pine needles. I am a grandmother, an ancestral spirit. On the ground before me a snaking tangle of crinkled fibers twists and burgeons into a ruddy heap. In my hands a dwindling basket turns as my deft fingers pick apart, loosen and unwind its tightly woven strands of boiled cedar. I am telling a story.
This dream journal entry also appears in my book The Shadowdancer: Field Notes of a Psychic Naturalist.
Photo by Intricate Explorer
CAMILLA WELLS PAYNTER 