Don't Fall Up

Posted:

On the morning of February 13, 2023, I dreamed I was hiking down a steep mountain trail with a sharp drop on the right.  The trail was so steep that I couldn't see ahead more than a dozen feet.  It was like I was approaching another sharp drop, and I expected to be able to see more of the trail ahead with every step, but as I progressed forward visibility remained the same.  In fact the trail before me looked like the effect used in stop-motion animation where the terrain in front of the characters is actually a spindle rotated every frame to give the illusion of forward motion.

On top of all that, I was experiencing vertigo so badly that I felt like I was walking upside down and was disoriented by the sense that I could at any moment fall up into the sky.

The path was snowy and slick, and it wasn't long before I fell and started sliding on my bum.  With my feet in front of me, I tried to steer myself away from the drop on the right and keep my momentum low, all the while worried I might detatch from the ground and fall up or move forward too fast and shoot off of a precipice.

Then I woke up.