Deep winter dreaming

How do we make ourselves available to mystery?

Over the last 18 months I received a couple of dreams of an unusual kind. Rather than numinous and symbolic, these two dreams seemed instructional, both telling me that I should move to the Northern Rivers of NSW, even offering helpful details such as a monetary range that I should spend on a house in a community. The first dream told me even more specifically that I should move to a beach called ‘Cooks Beach -  an hour south of Byron Bay’.  

As a dreamworker, I take notice of the content of my dreams, treat them like a mystery not to be solved but to be courted, enquired and felt into; to encourage the dream experiences to shape my psyche in the way it desires. But these dreams were of an unfamiliar kind. What should I do with them? I wondered. Some might say act now - uproot your family and move immediately! Others might marvel at its absurdity and not give it a second thought.  

So, I did what I always do. I took notice. I google mapped Cooks Beach - nothing came up. I looked on a map where an hour south of Byron Bay is. I talked to some friends from around that way. One told me he was just in contact with an indigenous family called the Cooks who live an hour south of Byron Bay. My skin prickled. A year went by. I kept the dreams alive by thinking and feeling into them, bringing them into conversation. Wondering. And then it was time to act. For our winter escape, my partner Dan and I decided it was time to go to the northern rivers to follow the dream thread. So for the last two weeks we’ve been up there. Walking the land. Visiting communities. Swimming daily in ocean waves and cold mountain creeks. Allowing myself to be allured by the sight of diamond python slithering on rocky creek bed, whales’ full-bodied breach, the smell of coastal pandanus, the sight of my baby all smiles and bare bummed on warm winter sand. Feeling country. Letting country feel us. 

The final two days we traveled an hour south of Byron Bay, following a synchronicity that had us introduced to a community called Koranderie Ridge that invited us to stay in a little off-grid cabin called The Hilton that afforded a vast view of the coastline. That evening at a community potluck dinner, several people told me about their connection with the indigenous Cooks family and wondered whether there had been a beach named after them at some point. The following day, I walked the headland solo, bare feet in the soft coastal tufted grass kept low by the wallabies I could see hiding in the pandanus. The land felt welcoming, alive with wild nature, and familiar in a way I couldn’t pinpoint. It reminded me so strongly of the time I spent on a three day solo survival coastal trip during my year long retreat.

I still don’t know what will come of this dream and its clear instructions, but as I walked the headland I was filled with a sense of the rightness that I was making myself available to the dream and the mystery that it is; of putting my nose on the scent trail of its invitation, of letting the dream work me. I’m OK for them to continue to be mysteries. The trip has opened the door for me on the possibility of a move northwards sometime in the future. Who knows. In this question and its ongoing enquiry the dreams live on. 

Whether it's a dream, a hunch, a feeling, a yearning, a curiosity, can we lean in more towards these quieter more mysterious voices and give space for them to reveal something to us. Perhaps something marvellous. Winter is a good time for this.

In love and wildness

Claire