Dreaming Reality

I have this trick that I do when I am unhappy in my current place in life or feeling stressed about circumstances.  I visit dreams that I can pull into my mind like a movie reel.  It is my alternate universe that helps to settle my mind at night so that I can gain a few hours of sleep to face the coming day.  One of my favourite dreams involves Lake of the Woods in the Kenora area.  I first visited this area in 1990 when John and I loaded up our Honda Civic and drove West for the first time.  I fell in love with Kenora and its winding roads, stately trees, Canadian Shield rock and many many lakes. At the time I said to John "I could live here someday...I would like to live here someday."  I am not sure when my Kenora dream reel started but it would have been after that and most likely when John was away on tour.  My best guess would be 1993 during John's Cambodia tour when I heard from him infrequently and our very brief conversations were often filled with static and abruptly cutoff.  My Kenora dream involves paddling across pristine lakes and stumbling quite by chance upon an old log structure.  It is has been abandoned and is filled with mementos of days gone by...my kind of treasure.  It is not a tiny log structure either but more of a rambling beast that resembles a lodge or even more of a castle.  I have dreamt often of this log castle with its porch.  Over the years, whenever I have picked up on the sequence, I have researched ownership documents to discovered the current owners.  I have purchased the property.  I have gone through every nook and cranny lovingly ruminating over the many 'treasures' found within.  I have scrubbed down walls and floors and washed curtains.  I have repaired furniture.  I have boated countless hours across the lake back and forth hauling supplies for cleaning or mending.  Most recently I have just finished screening in the porch and I now have a large table in that porch to welcome friends and family...and lodge goers because in my dream I will be shortly opening up my log castle to visitors.  I am sure that this dream has somehow been morphed by my current reality of Maggie's Hill especially the screened porch version. Although beyond the welcoming of visitors, Maggie's Hill has never resembled my log castle in Kenora in either size, shape or location.  Regardless I have not had to visit this dream in a few years as Maggie's Hill has been keeping me happily occupied and John's tours are in the past.  But it is as vivid to me as always and remains on pause until I need to visit my dreamscape again some day.
Last night I was scrolling through the CBC news on my ipad as I often do in the evenings when a story about the Castle of White Otter Lake popped up.  There was a picture.  With that picture my dream came crashing through to reality.  I have never visited White Otter Lake and have never heard of the castle there and yet somehow I have dreamt of it often and the taking care of it has soothed my mind.  I cannot really explain any of this and do not find that I particularly want an explanation.  I think I will let this oddity just lie as it is.  But I am going to visit the Castle of White Otter Lake and I am going there soon.  It is calling my name.  Turns out you can only get there by canoe.  That makes sense to me. John has a bum knee so this adventure may not suit him.  I don't know yet as I have not yet told him of this weird dream to reality thing of mine.  Aidan is often up for a good paddle so he might be game or the prospect that the log castle was built by a trapper might entice Trapper Moe to join me. I won't go alone because I believe in paddling in pairs at a bare minimum so if all of that fails and anyone else feels like paddling with me to my castle that once only existed in my dreams, I am thinking that August of 2018 seems like a good time for a paddle.

Here is a wonderful video on the castle.  A bit long but well worth the listen and quite the reality check for me...