Thursday, December 1, 2011

The Big Pink Berry and the Mystery Insect

I'm driving on Chuckanut heading West. The strawberry and raspberry fields on either side are glowing pink with the sun.
I'm driving in my car but I'm sitting like I'm on a motorcycle. I'm kind of floating (maybe the seats have been removed--I can't see below me) in the center of the car. My body position is very aggressive, I'm tucked as if I'm trying to achieve as much speed as I can with the least amount of wind resistance.

I'm riding into the sunset.

Time Travel

I'm walking down a dirt road. There are two men behind me talking nonsense, nothing is clearly enunciated, its more of a low growl/mumble. The give off the impression of "doers", they are workers, not thinkers.
They are stocky and strong and I feel protected by them. The trail begins to fade into the forest and various green "northwestern-like" bushes and trees lay tangled across the path. The branches remind me of Alder trees: their bark is white and thin with horizontal grey hash marks. As the trail starts to disappear, I feel the branches lightly grazing my skin and tangling my hair.
There are berry bushes to my left. They remind me of Salmon Berry bushes (big light green leaves with small thorns).
All of a sudden (totally random) there is a little girl behind me (she's 6 or 7). I don't immediately turn to see her buy I can hear her voice and it gives me a general impression.
She wants me to pick a berry for her because she's too small to reach. The berry bushes are not dense, I can see a giant pink berry (it's about the size of my fist and resembles a raspberry but it's a really light pink, almost transparent) hanging, dangling on a large stem, about two and a half feet from the edge of bush.
There is plenty of room for me to weasel my arm through the thorns if I'm careful.
I reach towards the berry and even though I think my movements are calculated enough, I keep getting thorns stuck to my skin. Every time I try to get the berry, I get pricked and have to remove my arm.
I glance behind me (to my right--the girl is still on my left) and see the two men trying to clear the pathway. They are grabbing the thin white branches and breaking them. They are trying to push the broken branches down to the ground, hoping they would catch other branches and keep them from springing back up.
I turn around and look at the berry again. Same situation: I grab, get pricked, and pull out. This probably happens two or three more times before I decide it's MY berry, not the little girl's.
I finally reach it and grab it just barely with my fingertips and as I pull it towards me, the little girls screams, "Oh my god!! That's the biggest spider I've ever seen!!"
I look down and catch a glimpse of large, brown, hairy legs and I scream and drop my prized, juicy, apple-sized, glistening, pink berry on the damp orange and brown leaves. It rolls lazily as if following the spider behind a large rock (approximately the size of two shoe boxes stacked).
The little girl takes off running behind me as the creature comes into view around the right side of the rock. I can hear her stomping footprints fading as I look down, fearful in anticipation.
It kind of "chatters" around the corner and I realize, it's not a spider. It looks more like a cock roach, or a brown beetle. It's about the size of a shoe, a size 8. It has large, moth-colored, folded wings on its back. It gives me the chills, but it's definitely not as scary as a shoe-sized spider.
I'm just looking down, watching it skitter across the wet leaves.

Then I wake up.

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