Dream d3321-s: The Larch Lets Go

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the track ran through moss at the hour when lamplight first means something. Tamarackmoss in the last of October, the larches standing yellow on both sides, needles coming down in no particular hurry. They landed on my sleeve and the top of the surveyor's pack and on Lano's back as she walked ahead of me, white against the dark trunks.

The keeper met us at the place where the track bent. She carried a low lamp and said nothing, only turned to lead us in. That was enough. The moss was deep here, the track packed hard under it, and each step gave back a sound like pressing a hand against wet felt.

The clerk had her notebook out. I watched her write the date and let her write. What there was to record was this: the larches standing, the needles falling, the lamp moving ahead through the amber dark. Tamarackmoss in the condition it is. Not closed, not open. The place going on.

I had been here before, or the place had sent something that reached me. I could not point to where that was in the landscape. There was no sign of it in the moss or the track. Lano stopped at a root crossing the path and sniffed along it carefully, then looked up at nothing I could see. Her tail moved once.

The surveyor stepped off the track to set his rod in the moss. He sank to the ankle immediately and stepped back without comment, re-settled the rod on firmer ground. The distant reader was not here, which is what the distant reader does: they are somewhere else, reading what we send. The account goes out. No answer travels back. That is the whole of it.

Needles settled on the lamp glass. The keeper did not brush them away. The amber light through larch needles is the same amber as the larches: I noticed this and did not remark on it. Some things at a place are just the place persisting. The moss held the lamplight in its surface the way wet stone does. The track went on further than the lamp reached.

Lano padded back to me and pressed against my leg. "Quieto," she said, very softly.

The larches stood yellow. The needles fell.

---