Читать книгу Mud, Rocks, Blazes - Heather Anderson - Страница 14

SIX MONTHS PASSED IN a metronomic rhythm. I went about the routine of life: coffee, breakfast, and work, with my spare time spent either climbing peaks or planning my next climb. Yet night after night I woke with adrenaline coursing through my body. I sat bolt upright in bed breathing hard and trying to bring myself back into the reality of a bedroom where I was safe—to calm my brain as it tried to synthesize the nightmarish dream world I’d just been in with where my body was.

The details of the dreams varied, but the theme was always the same: failed attempts at backpacking. In some dreams I was poisoned. In others I was attacked by animals, or shot. Always, the calamity befell me as I tried to run to the mountains. Then I would wake up and sit in the darkness, hugging my knees as tears rolled down my cheeks. I desperately desired the life of the trail. I needed to walk day after day through the wilderness.

On December 31, 2014, I dreamed the most powerful dream of all. I’d loaded my backpack and started out the door, but then I remembered I had to go to work. Three employers were yelling at me because I was late. Within the dream, I woke up to the sun streaming in my face and birds chirping outside. Lying there, I imagined I was in my tent. I stealthily grabbed my pack and snuck out the door—away from employers and nightmares. I climbed into a yellow cab and was soon trotting across red clay earth in search of white blazes. At a junction in a clearing I found them. With a wide smile, I flung my arms open and twirled in a circle. Then I merged onto the white-blazed path and didn’t look back.

I woke from that dream within a dream—half nightmare, half vision—on January 1. There were no more dreams of a return to the trail after that. I now knew the path I must follow—one marked with white blazes.