Undiscovered Mackinac
Level of Lucidity: N/A Level of Cohesiveness:
Lucid Intent? No
This dream has been viewed 4331 times.
I've been having lots of longwinded detailed dreams since returning from Georgia, but that's just it, they've been TOO longwinded and detailed and I just haven't had time to take any of them down. :( I tried taking a few notes for this one however as it had to do with Mackinac Island.
I believe this was just part of a bigger dream. I didn't take notes as well as I should have and this is probably faded by now.
My memory picks up with me being at the computer looking at some pictures of Mackinac Island. I believe these were artists' representations of land formations from the 1800s, so of course there was some artistic license taken. They were big images--I had to scroll down to see the entire area of at least one of them--and there were at least one or two, and they seemed to be in sepia tones. Really detailed line art or etchings or some such. Perhaps I'd found them at eBay; I frequently browse eBay in real life and save postcard images and such of Mackinac Island though those are usually small. Anyway, I was trying to take a closer look at one of these and was having some trouble since I couldn't see the entire image at once--both its size and some other inexplicable thing seemed to be keeping me from this. I squinted and leaned forward to get a better look and I thought, "This isn't on Mackinac Island, it doesn't look anything like anything there!" I looked at it more closely though and then I think I realized that it was Mackinac Island, just a really old artistic rendition of it. It was of a large rock formation or cave. For some reason I think of the artists' renditions of Arch Rock from below, the great grassy weedy space beneath it. This was like that--I think it even had little people climbing around--but I don't think it was Arch Rock. I wanted to look at it in more detail but never got to. I found myself intrigued, though.
I guess some other stuff happened which I no longer recall, then I was apparently on a train (?) with some other people. I didn't seem to be myself, like I was roleplaying or something, only the others acted as if I weren't myself either. I was getting abnormally good looks at the outdoors as we went, like the track we were going along though it didn't seem to be a track, more like a path. We seemed to be in a train car so that's why I say train, though it was also kind of like being in a truck or something.
Firstly let me get one seemingly unrelated bit out of the way. While on this train I was looking at a paper or something about a German from WWII, whose name I believe was "Schanner" (pronounced "Shanner") or something much similar--I remember thinking that it sounded a lot like "Shatner" when said aloud. This man, I guess, had defected from Germany and assisted the American Allies during the war--he was either a scientist or a former Nazi officer, maybe both--and after the war he'd felt guilty about fighting his own people, the Germans, even though he didn't sympathize with Nazi doctrines. I think he'd been badly wounded in the war and I wondered if the injury(ies) had left him disfigured, though I can't recall what they were. I think he was supposed to be on this train somewhere and I was curious about him but I guess he didn't like seeing people and had been kind of a recluse for a long time even though he was well known (perhaps he'd done something really big to assist the Allies, or had made some kind of scientific discovery). I have no clue what this had to do with the rest of the dream, though the people with me--adult men--seemed to be involved somehow. They were military or government men of a sort, probably the former, and for some reason I was in their company (perhaps I was one of them) and we were now on this train. There may be more details but as I said, I don't recall them and I'm confused enough as it is.
Anyway...we were on this train and were going through a swamp of some kind. There were lots of trees, pines I believe, off to our sides but there was a moderately wide swath of cleared land on both sides of the "track" as well. This land was clumped with grass and sand and muck, though it wasn't as wet as swamps usually are. It was sunny out. The greenery wasn't bright green but more of an olive color and the sky was pale blue. It looked like the track went on for a long time. I kept observing our surroundings as I was curious about where we were.
The train or whatever--it behaved more like a vehicle now--turned left and the scenery began to change. I was now informed that we were on Mackinac Island, which I think does have some swamp area, but I think that at first I didn't believe this information because this looked NOTHING like any place I've ever seen on the island. I started to believe the news though, recalling the swamp area and then seeing what we passed next. I think I was informed that we were on the Turtle's Back (highest point of the island) and there is some area up there I don't think I've been able to explore so that made sense now, why I'd never seen any of this.
We seemed to be going along a relatively well-cleared area. The land around us was moderately level for a small area to both sides of the track, though it might have had little hillocks here and there. On the left it rose up sooner and steeper than on the right, and ahead it rose up too but that's for later. On the left I think it rose steeply into a grassy bluff. There were occasional Victorian-style cottages (especially one on the left) and other buildings here and there (most on the right) so the area was slightly populated. I felt that in this area lived yearlong residents of the island and they worked here, atop the Turtle's Back, so that's why tourists didn't often come because it was private land and didn't belong to the state. As for what they did here...it seemed to have to do with salt, limestone, or a combination of the two.
Passing by us on the right we went by a sort of ravine, and I pressed close to the window to get a better look; it had steep jagged walls. I knew this was a ravine that I've read really does exist somewhere in that area of the island; I've seen one picture of it in real life, but I don't know the extent of it or if it's still there. The word that leapt to my mind was "reservoir," but I don't think that's exactly what it was. The islanders either got their water here or the water passed through somehow--there was some kind of processing plant--or else they mined something, salt or limestone. There are limestone deposits all over the island--it's practically made of limestone--and they really used to use the stuff for building but now I think it's protected. In the dream it seemed to be more like salt, but it's like the two were the same, kind of. The path was bumpy as we went by these things because I think I was jostling around. We also passed by and slightly under some odd trees; they reminded me of the strange trees which arch over British Landing Road in real life, though they looked nothing like those; it was just the way they flanked the track that reminded me. They had strange handsized, brushlike clumps of needles or something, kind of rounded on the edges, and I was curious because they weren't cedars or any of the more frequently found trees on the island. I guessed it was because they grew up here that I'd never seen them.
We finally reached an area where the land rose up incredibly steeply before us and I think we turned left again. I gawked out the window in awe. It wasn't land that rose up before us, but a towering mountain of salt. Even "mountain" isn't an accurate word because it was a sheer cliff of it, like a bluff made of salt. I knew that the mineral was mined or quarried or whatever here, and these were the towering deposits that were still in use. (It was white and glittery, of course.) As we turned and passed under it I even felt a little afraid because it was so very tall, and it looked ready to come tumbling down, it was so steep. I think even one of the military men with me said that it was ready to fall sometime soon. Nobody seemed worried though. We continued driving/riding but I don't recall where we were going. I felt awed to be given such a rare glimpse of this part of the island, though, and hoped I could investigate it further in the future. (I seemed to be lapsing into my real self now.)
This dream left me with an impressive feeling of there still being many things about this place that I know little or nothing about. Though I'm fairly certain that giant salt cliffs aren't among them.
