Mark parked the car at a wooden structure with a peaked roof, maybe like a pergola, only long, sort of like a covered bus stop. It was still dark, and I have an image of our headlights shining brightly on the bushes and the bench in front of us. Large bushes, like laurels and rhododendrons, and simple wooden benches dotted a walkway running underneath the pergola. Now that I think about it, the shrubbery was green; so either it was evergreen or else it wasn’t winter. I think the path started out as a simple path, maybe graveled; but during the dream the setting transformed and the pathway gave the sense of being paved.
We got out. Mark had some 80’s or 90’s rock music playing on the car’s stereo, which he left on (in waking life I’m wondering if a newspaper delivery person was driving by with their stereo on). I pointed to a dark car parked a few stalls over and said something to Mark about how the lights and the music might not be appreciated by other people using the park. I don’t recall how, but eventually the lights and radio turned off.
Mark strode down the path to the right and I followed. Eventually, we got separated. I met a middle-aged woman going the other way on the path; this was surprising, because it was 5:30 AM and still dark. I think I knew her, but no one besides Mark in this dream presented as themselves, and instead were a mish-mash of general Eugene folks, who I recognized in the dream, but on waking, weren’t really anyone I know.
I met more folks in knots of two or five. They transitioned from wearing generic grungy/frumpy/shabby Eugene garb to flowing Pagan robes. A creek or inlet appeared. Across the water I saw more people in robes. The day got lighter, but foggier. I realized that we had somehow driven to a pagan fair or ritual.
The folks on the other side of the water formed circles and were dancing. I’m not recalling any music or drumming or chanting, which in waking is odd because they weren’t that far away. The folks on my side of the water seemed to be waiting for other events to begin. I ran into a fourty-something woman with wavy reddish hair (who might have been B.P.) and I think she informed me that the folks on the other side of the water had paid extra for the event and were holding a private ritual. There was a sense that an unnamed someone or someones were trying to undermine Eugene pagans by introducing class resentment.
I continued to walk along the path. At some point I found Mark laying down, wrapped in a warm green blanket (which usually lives on our couch), and napping on a bench. (In waking life, I’m recalling that I saw him yesterday wrapped in our green blanket and napping on our deck furniture during an unseasonably 50F and sunny January day.) I had a vague notion that I should move away from him so any conversations I had wouldn’t wake him.
The covered walkway turned into a interior hallway, like a convention center (or, the more I think about it, the EMU at the UO campus); it was open, and fairly light (or at least the walls were painted a light color and the wood was a light blonde stain. I saw a gay man I knew walk out of a room in a leather harness and a flowing loincloth and join a group of other vaguely-Paganish-vaguely-gay men. They were in a kitchenette or breakfast bar or niche; I remember a small, head-level window that let in foggy, overcast light. I joined them and there was a group conversation about hiking or ritual or something; I think I was trying to dream about the Eugene Radical Faeries and the old Eugene OUTdoor Group and mushed the two groups together.
The group broke up; the man in the harness left (who might have been R.U.) and reemerged from his room in academic-casual wear. I was speaking with someone tall and blonde (who might have been M.H.). Suddenly, I became aware that I had a lot of stuff—like a box of papers, my backpack, my cloak, a shoulder bag, etc.—that I needed to schlep back to the car. Tall-and-blonde said he’d stick around and watch my things; I have a sense that he was putting away dishes and cookware.
I returned to the parking lot. The car wasn’t there. Mark had (presumably) gotten board and left. He had texted me that I could text him and he’d come pick me up. There may have been some more about the dream involving loading up the car, but the dream recall ends here.
This dream seems like it wanted to turn into a crossing into another realm dream with the water, but didn’t—thinking about it some more, those dreams usually involve crossing over the water and/or an animal like a white horse or an otter. I think it’s interesting that the car was an amalgam of a red and a white car, which suggests the tarot trump card, “The Chariot” to me. I’m not sure why Mark and I were the only folks in the dream who were themselves; everyone else had a simultaneous I-am-X-I-am-not-X feel.
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