Blair Witch Addendum

Well, I finally had a Blair Witch Project dream. That's the only movie I've seen (since I was 13 or so) that actually made me worry about having nightmares. My dreams these days are generally benign or happy. I watched all the Evil Dead series in a row one day, followed by Dead Alive, and my main dream recollection from that night is having to help Bruce Campbell load a dishwasher.

Anyway, it took a while for this one to turn up. Minor spoilers for the movie, but heck, if you're online, there's a good chance you've seen it already.

I think this is the last building stuff/outdoor survival dream for a while.

...

I was one of the kids in the woods making the Blair Witch documentary. I wasn't one of the stars, though. I was myself as usual. I think I was a grip, or a writer, or just a friend along for the heck of it.

We were at the point where we had seen spooky sticks and rocks and heard things and now we were lost. I was just plain full of good advice:

"Hey, we should stay up all night and find out what's making those noises. We could have a really big fire!"

"That's not how you use a compass. We're just gonna walk in circles."

"Isn't the road perpendicular to the stream?"

"All that cursing is just going to get you more upset."

"We should wrap this heavy equipment in a tarp or something, then come back for it when we're found again."

"That's really not helping. We need to think about things calmly."

One could recreate this dream by watching the movie and interjecting my comments periodically. That's about how much good it did me, too.

We were setting up camp again in a heavy rain. It was a hilly place. In retrospect, it looked suspiciously like Tomlin Forest Girl Scout Day Camp, which would put us in Oregon. That's quite lost, if one's car is in New England.

There were a lot of folding chairs, some damaged and some undamaged. The movie kids were, as usual, freaking out and wandering around. I was trying to figure out why there were folding chairs out in the middle of nowhere. The Girl Scout hypothesis makes a lot of sense, really. Anyway, my conclusion was something along the lines of "Huh," and I decided that I should build something out of the chairs. I was folding them up, then lashing them together. They very easily formed a sort of geodesic dome, about the size of an above ground swimming pool. I thought that was pretty cool and started thatching it with mud and sticks and stuff. I guess that's more wattle and daub than thatch.

The kids were still wandering around when I finished. I tried to lead them into the dome, but it was very hard. They would only follow me for a few steps, then veer off on a tangent. It was like trying to lead a computer-controlled monster around in a dungeon game. Eventually, with a lot of patience, I got them in the dome. Boy, was it cozy! Kind of like an Indian sweat lodge or something. There was a big fire in the middle, and the walls were very sturdy. It was nice to be dry.

I went back out into the rain to see if we'd left any gear outside. For some reason, I took a small Army surplus folding shovel with me. No sooner had I gone a few steps but I saw a big rat. A big grey rat, about the size of a dog and looking completely out of place. True to my Viking heritage, I bashed it with my axe. I mean, shovel.

Butchering went well, considering I hadn't done it before. I guess that's why. I have read about it. I made a big cut in the rat's belly, and the skin came open easily. Inside, it was like a nut. There were no organs or blood, just two fleshy lobes, each the size of a loaf of bread. They came out very easily.

Anyway, I set some giant rat meat to cooking over the fire. The kids inside were still whining and bickering. The chick filmed me cooking the rat parts. They wouldn't eat any, because they didn't think it was safe. It was getting dark outside, but I was getting disgusted. I picked up my stuff and I up and left.

I walked the equivalent of a couple of blocks and found a medium-sized road. Two paved lanes flanked by ditches. The land on the other side was farmland, so I could see the lights of a nearby city. I considered telling the movie kids, but then I decided not to, because I really didn't like them very much.

After a quarter of an hour or so, a pickup truck with some barrels in the bed stopped and picked me up. I did make a note of the first mile marker we came across, so I could come back later and pick up the kids, but I really wasn't too concerned. I didn't like them very much.