Where Dreams Go
The week before Christmas, The Polar Express played at our local movie theater. Choosing to watch the holiday favorite at home, Kit and I made popcorn, cozied under wool blankets by the hearth, and boarded a mysterious train with a boy and group of children for a magical ride through dark forests, over tall mountains, and across a barren desert of ice to a huge city at the top of the world. Based on the Caldecott Medal winning picture book by Chris Van Allsburg, the timeless story speaks of friendship, bravery, and those who learn to believe in the spirit of Christmas.
The story also reminded me of where it is that children of all ages go when left alone to dream. Filled with the magic of how children view the world, I found myself on an unexpected journey of my own one recent night when a great shadow turned a cheesy full moon into an orange. It happened as I fell asleep while reading about a voyage of discovery with three young boys in Michael Ondaatje’s novel, The Cat’s Table.
Through the majestic woods out our great room window, the moon was low on the horizon, illuminating the freshly painted walls of a passenger ship in a sulfurous light as it departed from a distant harbor. In dreams, I was aboard a ship of words crossing vast oceans, seas, and passing through a great canal. It was a passage between a writer’s childhood (he was a boy of eleven then) and his later life as an adult.
Safely hidden in the woods that surrounded this dream, I was a stowaway on their magical voyage from Ceylon to London. The boy shared stolen pots of sweetened condensed milk and pastries with two young friends pilfer from the first class deck’s bodacious breakfast buffet, set out each morning while darkness still hide the three in that moment when the ship’s lights automatically go off just before first morning light.
It was at that moment before dawn that a long shadowy arm of a tree passed through the glass of our great room window and gathered me onto its branches. In a flash, the course of my dreamtime took another direction. “Time for an adventure of your own,” a voice barked. And with that, I left the ship and three boys and landed in a Western Sycamore tree on a meandering branch the shape of a goose in flight.
Perched atop the branch, I heard a voice from within the tree’s trunk. “Ships were once built entirely from trees,” the sage Sycamore reminded me, and with that I was sailing through the night air on the back of a giant goose. From below I heard the Sycamore say, “Remember, if trees can be made into ships that cross oceans and seas, then can they not also fly? You simply have to believe.”
On the next leg of my journey, I was reminded of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, a children’s book by Selma Lagerlöf, illustrated by Lars Klinting. Flying above wonderous landscapes, the goose finally set down next to a great Texas Live Oak that I once climbed as a child. Perched high in its branches, I’d spent hours creating tales of kings and queens to entertain my seven-year old mind.
“What did you know as a child about trees?” the Sycamore asked. I answered that I’d read that roses grow on trees in Alice in Wonderland, but hadn’t believed it possible. Many years later while trekking in the western Himalayas, I passed through a dense stretch of rhododendron forest high in the mountains. There giant red flowers bloomed like roses on branches covered with snow. Surely, I remember thinking, I’d entered wonderland.
“Describe the most magical trees you’ve ever seen or tasted,” the Sycamore whispered upon returning me to my bed, just as the moon slipped orange behind a giant shadow. Still dozing, I recalled the outrageous beauty of white flowering chestnuts in Paris, flame trees in Asia, purple jacarandas in Australia—and the taste of almonds roasted just barely, English walnuts on Greek yogurt, perfect pears that arrived in gift boxes at Christmas time, and pecans baked into holiday pies.
Kit awoke the next morning with news that he’d risen in the night when he heard what he thought was a train thundering down tracks somewhere in the distance. “Did you hear it? he asked.
“Indeed,” I nodded. “I heard that very train, found a round trip in my robe pocket, and stepped aboard. And what a ride I had.”
That is the magic of books and memories from childhood that live forever in the mind. That is where dreams go when you allow yourself to believe.