a dream quest

up at dybdahl's house john is getting ready to go hunting in an area near the distant small town of wall.  young zelah wants to join him,  but i would have to go and pick her up later. i decide after consulting a map, that i will head there on skis. the skis are old, made from a log cut in half, so the are rounded on the bottom and flat on top, with some sort of metal and leather bindings. and some kind of decorative covering at the front point, which i remember thinking would be marketable. i am skiing happily along, and it seems my father is with me, giving me advice.  good thing too, because the terrain is very rugged and steep. my father yells at me to stop just before i was about to ski off the edge of a cliff. he says "i told you to always check out the terrain before you ski down it!" he was right. it was very treacherous.  then i decide to follow some railroad tracks that seem to follow a safer route, but he is still chastising me. he is right, again it is very steep and i am wondering how the trains are able to make it down these crazy tracks, but i proceed carefully and it turns out ok. the tracks lead me into a small town, and the snow starts to become thinner and sparser, so i take off the skis and i am carefully climbing on very wet long grass, using egg beater sticks as walking sticks?  there are streams of melting snow and children are playing here. one child is swimming and playing in the water and i warn him that the stream is very cold and fast and dangerous for him to play in.  my father does not seem to be with me now, i think he did not want to risk the steep slope. (funny because he is a far better skier than i) i go into the town, still following the train tracks, and they seem to lead right inside a house. i apologize to the people for walking right in, and ask them if i am headed the right direction to wall. they are nice enough, and direct me through a strange little door in the wall. there are a couple of small doors, ostensibly to keep the cold out.  i ask if they can close the door behind me, as it has two sliding panels, and my hands are full with my pack and skis as i crawl out through the tiny opening.  i go to another building, and here we are building a fire with tiny sticks to keep warm. hope is there with her beautiful blue twinkling eyes, and heather with her baby. some one asks when they will be allowed to play the game_____? (i hope i will remember what it was called.) the answer was, when they were 13 and in the presence of a yak in some place. disappointed, we traveled on (seemed to have a different companion now, can't recall whom.) in the next town there was a yak, and some code was spoken, and i had been given two sticks from the previous place, and now it seemed we would begin to play this strange game, we were very excited! (then i woke up.  i very much wanted to go back to sleep and continue this strange quest. i did dream a bit more, but cannot recall any details.  this dream was very surreal and compelling.  it is relevant that my father was warning me of dangers, because he is someone i would often turn to for advice in the past, and he is no longer in that role. perhaps that is why i traveled on alone. hope and heather are two women that i admire a lot, and do seem to have a whimsical, magical comic side about them, so interesting that they seemed to hold the mystery of the game. also interesting that i was traveling to the town of wall, since boundaries and permeability have been a theme lately. also funny that i was going to pick up zelah, yet i did not bring my car. )