>Coming home from the annual sixth grade trip to camp always leaves a little wistful feeling that I call “Camp Hangover.” The symptoms are feelings of relaxation, peace, and good will toward students…at least until the first bell rings. This year the hangover was stronger than most — perhaps because it was my last school trip to camp. When I woke up in the cabin each morning and climbed out of my bunk, usually before anyone else in the cabin, there was such a crystal clearness in the air, a crispness so strong I could almost taste it. I felt like pouring a cup of coffee, sitting down at the picnic table and listening to nature around me. Now, for a hearing impaired person, listening is a relative term. But here, on the edge of a small lake the locals call a pond, the area was so quiet that I could hear several different kinds of birds, an occasional fish jumping, bullfrogs (yes, bullfrogs!), and a distant woodpecker. I could see the still surface of the water reflecting the birch trees on the island across the way. Most of all, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace.
That’s where the dreaming comes in. I’ll never own a cottage on water. They’re simply too expensive. Buying a small vacation cabin in the woods would be impractical, too. To get privacy and distance would require buying acres of land, and therefore paying mega-taxes and spending large amounts of time maintaining it. Uh-uh, not likely.
I can, however, pour my coffee and sit out on my own deck in the summer. We live in an older, almost historical neighborhood of many trees, lots of birds, albeit with an occasional car or lawnmower in the early morning mist instead of bullfrogs. The sense of peace can still be around; I just have to look within to get it, rather than without. If I can do just that, perhaps the dreaming isn’t wasted after all.