09/21/04
In Search Of The Fairy Arch


In real life, there was once a natural rock formation on Mackinac Island called the Fairy Arch. I have reason to believe it has collapsed, because the most recent pictures I was able to find of it were from the late 1800s; it was apparently along the shore, and as there is nothing like that along the shore, and it's not listed in the guidebooks anymore, it must have fallen long ago. :( Until finding an etching of it that depicted it on the shore a little earlier this summer, I had thought perhaps it was merely surrounded by undergrowth further up on the East Bluff, but now I don't believe that. I'm still puzzled as to why I can't find any mention anywhere of its apparent demise, since it seems something like that would have caused news. There's a similar, still-existing formation in the vicinity called Arch Rock; this is much more famous, and is a big tourist spot, so I know that if it were to collapse, it would make big news. So why is there no mention of the Fairy Arch beyond the warnings of its imminent collapse in the late nineteenth century? (Note--since typing this, I have found a postcard of the Fairy Arch dating from 1906, but nothing else.)

On my trip to Mackinac Island in August 2004 I wanted to make a brief stop along the east shore to see if I could at least find the place where the Fairy Arch once stood, since it seems there would at least be some rubble remaining even after all these years. I was too tired from walking around to ever make it that far so had to hold off on that for perhaps another year. I am a bit disappointed that I didn't get to do that, or to take the perilous Spring Trail--a very steep, stepped trail down from Arch Rock to the east shoreline--but I was simply too exhausted.

This dream had a very strange feeling to it about this most recent trip I took to the island. In the dream, it was as if I were still on this very trip, yet also taking a different trip later on, after some time had passed. I'm not sure how to explain it; maybe I can clarify as I go along.

My memory picked up with me walking along the shore of what was supposed to be Mackinac Island, only it looked MUCH different. I was walking along the east shore but the lighting and layout were all wrong...it was very bright and sunny, but the bluff didn't rise high above me like it should have, and the land was on my right. I don't know why this feels wrong but I just get the feeling it should have been on my left, though it depends on which way I'd be walking around the shore--I usually DO walk so it's on my left, but once I took the other way around so the East Bluff was on my right, and that was what I had planned to do this year. But in the dream it just felt wrong, out of place. Well, not IN the dream, but rather on recalling the dream. The island as it appeared in my dream feels all wrong NOW. It must have seemed normal in my dream because I never thought it was strange.

I can't even describe what was wrong...the layout seemed too flat, too "short," too wide open, even though there were trees and rocks and bluffs...like the island was shorter or something. The sunlight was falling from the wrong direction; it was too bright. The water seemed wrong, like it was too close, or there was too much of it, or it went on for too long with no other land in sight; I really don't know. I would compare the feeling I got to the feeling I got in my old dream "The Courtyard In The Swamp," with the feeling of "flatness" and wetness and sunniness. I'm sorry I can't explain it. :/

Anyway, I was walking with the land on my right and what was supposed to be Lake Huron on my left, though I did turn around a few times to look at my surroundings. (Maybe that was part of what seemed wrong--Lake Huron, while large, didn't seem like a Great Lake--it seemed smaller. Even though I just said bigger. UGH! Too confusing. I don't know. Maybe it felt more enclosed, like a bay or something?) I think I was getting ready to head back home and then I realized I had not had a chance to walk up Spring Trail. (In real life, I intended to go DOWN Spring Trail from inland, then back up, but in my dream I was already on the shore. My only real reason for wanting to take this trail in real life?--to look for the ruins of the Fairy Arch, if they exist.) I started to slow my walking as I thought, and I believe Arch Rock and Spring Trail were right nearby; I think I was on the "wrong" side of Arch Rock so I couldn't see the arch, just the other side where it pretzels around in this weird way, almost forming a secondary arch beneath. Spring Trail is actually some distance to this side, yet ahead along the shore, but in the dream I think it was right beside it. The bluff was not as tall and overgrown with trees as it should have been; Spring Trail did not look like the little stairway set back in the woods, the way it does in a photo I have of it. I'm not ENTIRELY sure if I saw these two but I think I did.

Here's where some incongruity regarding what time it actually was came into play. "I didn't get to walk up Spring Trail," I thought. "I was too tired." I paused and mentally checked my physical state, then thought, "I'm not so tired now. I think I could manage it before heading back!" I got ready to go up Spring Trail. Now this was weird, because while I was acting as if it were an earlier trip on which I hadn't gotten to go, I was also acting as if it were the same trip--"I'm not so tired now," like my feet were still recovering from so much walking that very day. It's like this was both the trip I'd already taken, and yet a future one, at the same time. Really weird. I got the feeling of just remembering something I had totally forgotten to do in the past--like in my dreams where I suddenly realize I have a pet hamster, well here, I suddenly realized I hadn't gone up the trail, yet I felt I could now.

*shrug*

Well, I made up my mind to go up, but then I also remembered that I had not had the chance to look for the Fairy Arch, either. Then I seemed to totally forget about Spring Trail. (Maybe because my reason for wanting to take it was nullified, seeing as I was already on the shore!) "That's right," I thought. "I wanted to see if I could find any washout where it used to be...I'll look around while I'm here." (I think I was overdressed, like in a jacket or coat--I did wear a jacket in real life, but it was cool that day, whereas here it was so bright and sunny it must have been warm.) I turned around now so the bluff was on my left and started walking along a bit, looking up at the bluff to see if there were any big collapsed areas of rock. Now the bluff was higher than it had been before, almost normal. But there were still not so many trees and the bluff was not as steep; it's like it was set back a bit from the shore. I passed a few washouts where big rock formations might have stood but wasn't too sure about them. Then I came to a big partially upright, almost columnar outcropping and the longer I looked at it, the more I thought it might have been the bottom part of the Fairy Arch, still standing after all this time. I got very happy and excited to see this. This HAD to be the last remains of the Fairy Arch! I walked around it and peered upwards and nodded. "That could have been part of it...the arch might have been there, way in the past." I was just about positive. And while I was still sad that such a beautiful formation had collapsed, I was very excited to find even its remains. In real life I would be excited too to find out where it once stood!

I think I was going to take pictures. I had the digital Polaroid camera with me. In real life, this camera has had some problems, which include erasing images taken several days earlier from its card when you take new pictures--overwriting them, in effect. I was very worried on my trip to the island that it would do this, but it did not. In real life I have a few more pictures on it and I have refrained from taking new photos in a while because I'm too lazy to clean off the card, and I don't want to accidentally overwrite what's on there. In my dream, these few earlier photos still existed and I was worried about overwriting them--I also think I had some earlier shots of the island itself on it, which I have the clear feeling I had taken several hours earlier, on this same trip. Me going for several hours without taking ANY shots of the island is pretty weird behavior for me. But I guess I had just not been interested enough. I was worried about losing these pictures but decided it was worth the risk to get some nice shots.

Only now I seemed to be intent on photographing something completely different. No longer was the ruined Fairy Arch or any other rock formation standing nearby. Instead there was a dead, skeletal tree, standing in what looked to be shallow water like a little bog or inlet or bay or something. This is confusing because there was water on BOTH sides of me now, like a little bay into the island which this tree stood in. Can't explain it right. Even Lake Shore Road, if that's what it was, didn't seem to exist in the same way in this part, like it was flooded or just a sandbar. This tree had only a few branches on it and it was completely barren--lightish-colored wood, no twigs or leaves or bark, like it had been stripped. The wood had long vertical cracks running through it and was kind of a golden color, and rather smooth from the wear of the elements. It curved kind of to the right and upward. It stood in shallow, amber-colored water which extended inland into a clearing or inlet or lagoon or something possibly surrounded by short trees, though again, all the trees seemed WAY too short and everything WAY too open. I think the bluff or whatever rose again immediately to my left, though (when I was facing the tree). And for some reason I was very interested in taking a photo of this dead tree.

I held up the camera with an "Ooh" and an "Aah" and started trying to frame a good picture but the tree was so close that I could not get a full shot of everything I wanted to include. I decided after a few tries to take some steps back, into Lake Huron, and get the shot from there. (In real life there is Lake Shore Road, then some scrub and rocky beach leading downward, and then Lake Huron; here it was right nearby, shallow, and seemingly not rocky.) I stood here and held up the camera again. The water around the tree was bright amber colored and rippling, and I think the earth beneath it was sandy, and there may have been some dark rocks or vegetation which made the colors alternate between light and dark; it was very beautiful and shallow, just a few inches around the tree and maybe deeper further inland. I held up the camera to take a shot and then felt my feet start to sink in the ground. I teetered unsteadily and looked down. Rather than standing in a relatively safe lake, I was in fact standing upon some boggy sandy mucky stuff, reddish-brown in color, like dark sand; and my feet were getting sucked in. Somewhat dismayed, I held up the camera again and tried to snap a few shots before forcing myself to move. My feet sank even further and this stuff was really gripping onto me. I lifted one foot at one point and it was just...ugh. Thick and clingy like quicksand. Very mucky. I decided it would be best for me to get out of it before I got stuck.

I started wading back to the...shore, or whatever...but the more I moved the more I sank! Now this part is almost like it didn't QUITE happen--like I was partially lucid and knew it was not real, or I was roleplaying, or something, though I also acted like it was real--just not as panicked as I would be in real life. I know that I sank in it very deeply, but it's like I was lying back rather than standing upright and sinking--kind of like floating atop it--and ALSO like I was lying back and floating in the air above it or else pretending I was sinking while I wasn't. But I was sinking. I just never got a feeling of being totally immersed in it like I later claimed I was. I only remember the feeling of my feet being stuck in it.

I struggled some more, growing ever more anxious, and sinking ever more deeply. Nuts! Then I realized that if I wanted to get out I had to stop fighting--that was, of course, just making it worse. So I went limp and relaxed and sure enough, stopped sinking so fast, though by now I was in up to my neck (at least pretending) and had no idea how to get back to safety. (Might I add that somewhere in this dream, either here or later on when I was talking to somebody else of this, I got the feeling I either was or was pretending to be Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan) from CSI. Not sure why.) I seemed to be lying back with my head pointed toward the island and my legs pointed away from it. (Even though, as I said, I also seemed to be above the sand, not buried at all.) I really had no clue how to get out of this without struggling, which would just make me sink more! Yet I somehow managed it. I think I very GRADUALLY shifted my way toward shore, and while I did start to sink again, at least it wasn't as quickly since I wasn't fighting so hard. And I must have dragged myself onto dry land again and kept myself out of the muck. I was very impressed with myself for not having panicked and struggled so I would have drowned--though it had certainly been close. I believe I brushed the muck from myself, though I was pretty clean, like it had not happened. The texture of the stuff was as of thick heavy wet sand.

There seemed to be some dream shiftage here, as I know that later on I was talking with somebody--a parent?--Gil Grissom from CSI?--about this incident. I think maybe someone else was planning to go into that area, and I started advising them to be careful not to walk into the muck like I had. "I went into it right up to my nose!" I exclaimed, pressing one finger against the bottom of my nose to illustrate. I used some way to describe this mucky patch but the word was not quicksand. I knew it was LIKE quicksand, but it wasn't--perhaps I called it bog or something like that. Maybe the consistency of the stuff you sank into wasn't the same as regular quicksand, like it was thicker. *shrug* I get the feeling Gil Grissom or my parents or whoever was just listening kind of neutrally, while I warned somebody else, a potential tourist; I think I'd been bragging to whoever I'd been talking to first, before then, about how smart I'd been to relax in order to pull myself out of the muck. Though I think even in the dream it didn't totally make sense to me, how I'd managed to pull myself out without struggling and sinking further. In fact, my escape had seemed rather abrupt, as if it weren't really happening, even in the dream. :/ Oh well, at least I was okay, which relieved me greatly.

Real-life associations: I've alredy described my wish to find out more about the Fairy Arch, and how I planned on doing that (futilely, as it turned out). When I was on the island in real life my feet did sink into muck at one point, though this was on the shore of a tiny inland pond in the Croghan Water Area, entirely on the opposite side of the island from the East Bluff, and I was in no danger of sinking up to my nose! I've also been working on updating my Mackinac Island website, and the day before this I had looked at a photo of that weird twist in the underside of Arch Rock, and at the photo I have of Spring Trail. My trip to the island was weeks ago however, and I don't know why this dream would pop up now and not back then. :/



2004 Dreams
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