A dream
20/01/14 04:48
I have been dreaming of canoes. In the past I have dreamed of paddling at times and of building at others. Last night’s dream was of the detail of the construction of the gunwales of a very intricate canoe.I have no idea why I would dream of such decorative features. The canoes I build have functional gunwales and my system is remarkably similar from canoe to canoe. I use a simple out wale and a series of small spacers as I glue the inhale. After the glue has dried, I use a hand-held router to curve the edges leaving the spaces for easy draining of water from the canoe and handy places to attach a rope if needed. I use those spaces when tying loads into the canoe. The system is light weight, functional and reasonably attractive.
Last night I dreamed of a canoe that had pony beads laced into the lashing on the gunwales. Lashing with spruce roots is done on genuine birch bark canoes and some skin-on-frame kayaks. I’ve never built a boar with that kind of lashing and I doubt if I ever will. I don’t have ready access to the materials and I don’t possess the knowledge or skills in building such boats.
I have admired those canoes in museums and in countless books and articles that I have collected on the subject. Tappan Adney was a man obsessed with bark canoes. He single handedly preserved the heritage of North American Bark canoes by building 110 incredibly accurate and finely detailed models of native canoes. John Jennings has produced a wonderful book of photographs of the models and I have poured over that book again and again. There are many decorated gunwales, some have the lashings dyed or painted. But I have never seen beadwork in gunwale lashings. I got out a couple of books to look after I woke this morning. My dream is of something that I have never seen.
I guess that it is not uncommon for me to dream of paddling and canoes, especially in the winter. I develop a hunger to be out on the lake in the season where my exercise is mostly walking, hauling firewood and rowing on a stationary machine. I long for the view of the sunrise from the surface of the water and the gentle sound of the craft slipping in response to the dip of my paddle. I hunger for the sight of the beaver and the eagles and osprey. I even miss the raucous noisiness of the geese.
But I am not a person who remembers his dreams often. I go many nights in a row without any conscious recollection of what I had dreamed. I am content to let the dream world fade into the dark recesses of my mind. There are too many wonderful and exciting things to learn and think about in the world of my awake hours.
The head of the psychology department at our college was also the organist at the church we belonged to during those years, so we stayed in contact after graduation more than was the case with some of our teachers. Dr. John Bross had started recording his dreams in a journal when he was a graduate student. Over the years he had developed a remarkable skill at remembering his dreams, often being able to record a half dozen or more dreams upon awakening. It was a bit of an obsession, I suppose, like me writing essays in the wee hours as I begin my day. At any rate, his experiences didn’t produce a major volume on the meaning of dreams, just lots and lots of dream narratives. He got so good at remembering his dreams that he never found the time to fully analyze them.
I have tended toward the opposite. I am so interested in the meanings of things that I have not invested time and energy in remembering my dreams. Remembering a dream is an event that occurs only once or twice a month for me. My dreams tend to be fantastic combinations of events that would never come together in my waking hours and are at best amusing.
So it is strange to me that I would wake not just once but twice in the night with a vision of the details of how to string pony beads onto the gunwale lashings of a canoe. The detail of the dream is fascinating to me. Three beads per lashing. Five rounds of lashing so close that the beads touch, then a space of a half inch or so and another five rounds of lashing. I don’t even know if the decorative feature was for the entire length of the canoe or just at the bow. My dream was focused on the beads as the gunwales bent up and in toward the bow.
I can’t explain why by brain was developing such a picture. It was a pleasant experience to think of how beautiful a canoe could be made, but it seems to have no connection to reality. Maybe such flights of imagination are a way that my mind takes a vacation when I sleep.
Maybe I should pay more attention to my dreams. The ancients believed that God was talking to them in their dreams and that their dreams revealed what God intended them to do with their lives. Dreams, of course, required a certain amount of interpretation. I’m pretty sure that God isn’t calling me to spend the rest of my life decorating canoes with pony beads. Maybe God is calling me to open my eyes and look for the beauty of small details. Maybe God is reminding me that the art of canoeing is a gentle blend of design, naval architecture, craftsmanship, and paddling technique. Maybe I am simply being called to appreciate and express gratitude for the beauty and grace of paddling a hand-made boat.
Maybe God was just giving me a topic for another blog.
Last night I dreamed of a canoe that had pony beads laced into the lashing on the gunwales. Lashing with spruce roots is done on genuine birch bark canoes and some skin-on-frame kayaks. I’ve never built a boar with that kind of lashing and I doubt if I ever will. I don’t have ready access to the materials and I don’t possess the knowledge or skills in building such boats.
I have admired those canoes in museums and in countless books and articles that I have collected on the subject. Tappan Adney was a man obsessed with bark canoes. He single handedly preserved the heritage of North American Bark canoes by building 110 incredibly accurate and finely detailed models of native canoes. John Jennings has produced a wonderful book of photographs of the models and I have poured over that book again and again. There are many decorated gunwales, some have the lashings dyed or painted. But I have never seen beadwork in gunwale lashings. I got out a couple of books to look after I woke this morning. My dream is of something that I have never seen.
I guess that it is not uncommon for me to dream of paddling and canoes, especially in the winter. I develop a hunger to be out on the lake in the season where my exercise is mostly walking, hauling firewood and rowing on a stationary machine. I long for the view of the sunrise from the surface of the water and the gentle sound of the craft slipping in response to the dip of my paddle. I hunger for the sight of the beaver and the eagles and osprey. I even miss the raucous noisiness of the geese.
But I am not a person who remembers his dreams often. I go many nights in a row without any conscious recollection of what I had dreamed. I am content to let the dream world fade into the dark recesses of my mind. There are too many wonderful and exciting things to learn and think about in the world of my awake hours.
The head of the psychology department at our college was also the organist at the church we belonged to during those years, so we stayed in contact after graduation more than was the case with some of our teachers. Dr. John Bross had started recording his dreams in a journal when he was a graduate student. Over the years he had developed a remarkable skill at remembering his dreams, often being able to record a half dozen or more dreams upon awakening. It was a bit of an obsession, I suppose, like me writing essays in the wee hours as I begin my day. At any rate, his experiences didn’t produce a major volume on the meaning of dreams, just lots and lots of dream narratives. He got so good at remembering his dreams that he never found the time to fully analyze them.
I have tended toward the opposite. I am so interested in the meanings of things that I have not invested time and energy in remembering my dreams. Remembering a dream is an event that occurs only once or twice a month for me. My dreams tend to be fantastic combinations of events that would never come together in my waking hours and are at best amusing.
So it is strange to me that I would wake not just once but twice in the night with a vision of the details of how to string pony beads onto the gunwale lashings of a canoe. The detail of the dream is fascinating to me. Three beads per lashing. Five rounds of lashing so close that the beads touch, then a space of a half inch or so and another five rounds of lashing. I don’t even know if the decorative feature was for the entire length of the canoe or just at the bow. My dream was focused on the beads as the gunwales bent up and in toward the bow.
I can’t explain why by brain was developing such a picture. It was a pleasant experience to think of how beautiful a canoe could be made, but it seems to have no connection to reality. Maybe such flights of imagination are a way that my mind takes a vacation when I sleep.
Maybe I should pay more attention to my dreams. The ancients believed that God was talking to them in their dreams and that their dreams revealed what God intended them to do with their lives. Dreams, of course, required a certain amount of interpretation. I’m pretty sure that God isn’t calling me to spend the rest of my life decorating canoes with pony beads. Maybe God is calling me to open my eyes and look for the beauty of small details. Maybe God is reminding me that the art of canoeing is a gentle blend of design, naval architecture, craftsmanship, and paddling technique. Maybe I am simply being called to appreciate and express gratitude for the beauty and grace of paddling a hand-made boat.
Maybe God was just giving me a topic for another blog.