Red Deer Photo by Pawel Ryszawa

Even though the Ukraine flu outbreak didn't turn out to be interesting I've continued to tinker with remote viewing the Ukraine area, mostly because I like to explore places. To remote view anything or wander around purposefully in Dreaming, I need a reason. Once the reason expires I can have some fun. In the last years of the Cold War I poked around behind the Iron Curtain a bit for other reasons but I haven't been to that part of the world for a long time. It looks much like any place else, and when there's nothing unusual happening it's hard to tell you haven't jumped maybe as far as the back yard, which is what I thought at first when I did my setup meditations before bed a few nights ago and woke up in a strange but familiar place.

We have a back yard where you can look over an overgrown fencerow into a hayfield, and that's what I thought I was doing except that the field wasn't quite right, full of brush clumps and tall brown grassy weeds, backed up by a forest that shouldn't have been there. I was about to ignore what I saw, but just as I started to turn away a patch of gray moved among the bushes. Looking back I saw a deer running through the field, apparently startled by my sudden appearance—but it wasn't the sort of deer I was used to seeing around here. The deer was bigger and heavier than the local whitetails, with thick gray fur and a patch of lighter fur on its rump. When it ran off I saw no warning white.

Oh, well, I thought, I must be just dreaming.

Follow up:

Border Crossing Photo by Nillerdk

Unless I'm very deeply into the remote viewing process I don't usually pay much attention to the transitions from place to place. Especially in Dreaming that doesn't seem very important—there's a period you go through when you have to learn how things are done and go step by step, but then the whole process becomes instinctive and you just do it. It's like not having to think about how you drive the car—once you learn, it's just habit. So I'm not sure how I got to the next place, but I had been thinking about seeing one of the border checkpoints with Slovakia next. Slovakia had closed all but one checkpoint because of the flu rumors and I thought I'd take a look.

I found myself in what looked like a temporary military outpost built out of sandbags and tents. The sandbags were stacked up in low walls that served as windbreaks for the tents. There wasn't anything big going on, just three or four soldiers hanging out with nothing to do. I stepped or actually crawled into one of the tents to check out the conditions and got immediately claustrophobic, which amused all the guys watching me. Perceptions get confused in Dreaming and I felt like I was lying under a massive descending wall of concrete.

Outside at the checkpoint I felt a lot better, and looking out over the sandbag wall I saw a clear path through dense forest, the trees strangely uniform as though they were all exactly the same age—the way a forest looks when it has been replanted. Another flash of movement down the road caught my eye, a small animal that I thought might be a cat but oddly hump-shaped for a cat. Dark almost black fur, and fast, it showed up just for a moment as it crossed between bushes. Then it came out again and seemed to see me, began leaping purposefully down the pathway towards me, quickly passing me on my right side. I kept thinking of it as a cat but noting odd differences in the way it moved, the shape of its head—oh well, cats come in all types.

I turned around to look at it and suddenly I'm somewhere else. Turning back, the checkpoint and the trees are gone. The landscape is all torn up as though in some recent times heavy machinery moved through, leaving trenches and tracks and hummocks behind. Newly made dirt roadways now abandoned to mud and weeds, mounds of earth pushed up by earthmoving blades. Reminded me of training grounds after the tanks roll through.

My animal friend was sitting on the mound to my right, about arm's length from where I was standing, and obviously wasn't a cat. Turns out he was a European polecat, an animal I'd never met before. He was very curious about me but not afraid of me at all, so we spent a few minutes checking each other out. He looked like a big weasel but heavier. I thought he might be an otter, the only animal I knew that was close to him in size and appearance, but he didn't have the slick look they have and we weren't anywhere near water.

Polecat Photo by Snowmanradio

And eventually I came home with a few clear memories, one of the marks of real Dreaming. Most dreams are murky and fanciful things, and in Dreaming you expect things to be that way but they aren't. Things check out as real. The memories of Dreams aren't the same as the thoughts of dreams that fade away a moment after you wake up. Dreams, the old kind, stick with you. The memories are as solid as they are for anything else you do.