Dream d3327-s: Larches at the Limit

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the fire tower at Tamarackmoss stood on its iron legs above the canopy and the larches stretched from there to where the sky came down to meet them, and I could not see the end of them.

The keeper was already at the rail when we climbed the last flight. Lano went ahead of me on the grating, her claws making small sounds against each rung, and she pressed to the keeper's side and stayed there, watching the dark between the trees. The keeper did not turn. They held the rail and looked where she looked.

The lamp inside the tower threw amber across the planking. I stood on the catwalk and let my eyes go out along the ridge. The larches had gone gold with the season and in the failing light they held that gold at the tips, as if the color were something the trees meant to keep after everything else had darkened. The surveyor had been here before and measured the distance to the far ridge. The relay clerk had written what was here and sent it. Somewhere the distant reader had taken that account into a quiet room and sat with it. None of that traveled back. The larches did not know it had been sent.

There was a cold in the air that had come down from somewhere higher. I pulled the collar of my coat and looked at the place beside the railing where, in an earlier visit, there had been a tin cup hanging on a hook. The hook was still there. The cup was not.

Lano moved from the keeper's side and walked the length of the catwalk slowly, nose low, reading the planking for something she did not announce. At the far end she stopped and sat, facing out. The trees held their color. She held her position. Neither of them moved.

The keeper said the larch below the east corner had gone over in the summer. They said it the way a person says a thing they have said before, to themselves, while working through what it means. I did not ask which summer. I looked toward the east corner and the gap in the canopy was visible even in the low light, a place where the sky came through between branches.

The lamp inside cycled. The light on the planking shifted and steadied.

I took out the record I had been carrying and looked at the five marks in the witness column. The place had been recorded five times. Each time something was here. Each time that something was noted and sent. I did not add to the column. I looked at the east corner gap where the larch had gone and at Lano at the end of the catwalk and at the keeper's hands on the rail, and I let the place go on being what it was, dormant, real, continuing without instruction.

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