Memories of mountain dreams

Dreams are the mysterious language of the night. Each evening after the setting sun has beckoned the moon, a golden harvest is woven into our slumbering consciousness.

Denise Linn, from 'The hidden power of our dreams'


Last night I dreamt, as I very often do, that I was at L'Hermitage. This is a place I closely associate with both my childhood and my father and unlike other people, places, homes and schools, L'Hermitage was a 'constant' - more like a friend, and once enfolded in the smell of wood smoke, pines and mountains, I felt instantly comforted and more at home there than anywhere else.

A few weeks ago I talked about the drawing exercise I was asked to try out by Priya who gives me Reiki. She asked, very simply, for me to draw a picture of or for each close member of my family. I put my own slant on this and drew pictures related, in one way or another, with sleep.When it came to my father, I drew him in his bed in L'Hermitage, shouting out during one of the nightmares he often had. The nightmares were always the same: that he was being pursued by a gorilla and had to climb up a tree to escape from it. The truth is, I can't even remember if his nightmares disturbed me much as a child, but I do remember talking about them with my family. But in the opposite corner of this picture, regardless of my 'real' memories, I drew myself as a small girl, sitting on my bed, terrified by the shouting that came from upstairs in my father's room.

The reason I am mentioning this is less for the picture than for the room I drew myself in. This was the one downstairs bedroom in L'Hermitage and was dark, cosy and musty. I very often slept there with my sister or with a friend that joined us on our holidays and, as the years passed, the room started to take on its own character. The reason for this was because I dreamt more vividly in this room than I ever have done before or after. People often say it's normal to dream vividly at altitude. This may be so, but my dreams never took on a fraction of the intsensity that they did in this room. During the night I remember being scared by shady intruders, enchanted by magical beings and entertained by an endless, colourful cast of characters that peopled my dreams. These memories have no point to them - I'm not trying to draw any conclusions from them. They are simply that - memories. I suppose my dreams are something I'm becoming increasinly interested in at the moment as I'm reading a book called The Hidden Power of Dreams. Also, after several weeks of not remembering a single dream (which is very unusual for me), in the past couple of weeks they are back with a vengeance, coincidence or not.