August 28th, 2026 by G.
The last dream of my recent dreams was long and involved and I will only able to recall a few of the details here. It is the setting that stuck most in my mind. Here’s the setting. We–meaning me and some vague unspecified other people, probably family members, although the only one that I ever specifically interacted with was my mother–are on a high ridge line looking west over the south end of the Utah Valley. Though the geography is not what you would see if you were actually there; instead its a slope up from the foothills and then the middle third becomes very steep, almost an escarpment although it is climbable mostly not using your hands so not completely vertical, maybe more like a 60° slope or 50° slope. This very steep slope ends in kind of ridgeline and then the mountain continues beyond that but at a more normal slope, not nearly as steep. I’ll also note that the the flora and fauna actually don’t seem typical of Utah valley nor the rock. The rock is a dark brown that I think is probably basalt and there are junipers and cedars.
In this dream there is at the base of the mountains some kind of BYU extension campus or secondary facility–call it BYU-Spanish Fork for convenience–and then up at the ridgeline where we’re at is a semi-independent facility or organization but it’s associated in some way with the BYU satellite campus or satellite institution below us. It is our parent institution in some way.
It never fully becomes clear to me what kind of institution this is on the ridge line. It’s mostly students, but there are a few families there also, so maybe part way between being an Aspen Grove and being a school of some kind.
In any case, the parent institution below has given us an absolutely unacceptable directive, and on our refusal to comply, has ordered us closed down. Even the director of our institution, who is an old man, very calm, very pacific, has reluctantly agreed that these directives are unacceptable, and we must fight. That’s how the dream begins.
For the first 30 seconds of the dream the students from BYU Spanish Fork, or whatever it is, massing at the base of the steep slope. Our students are cajoling our director for a decision, and then he decides. We issue our defiance, and they’re charging uphill (slowly). And we’re a thin line of people throwing rocks and stuff down at him.
It’s not a graphic dream, but it’s obvious that people are getting killed. This is real fighting, although there are no guns, and I don’t even particularly remember any weapons other than sticks and rocks. They were repulsed. They come again. They were repulsed again. It goes on for some time, maybe even a few days. They have many dead. Our thin line gets even thinner.
I should explain the setting more right here to make sense of the other parts of the dream, not that this is a dream that makes much sense. The area we’re at is fairly narrow. There’s the very steep slope in front of us, then a path, sort of a flat area, 10, 20, or 30 yards wide, with a few buildings and things behind us around where the mountain begins to slope up again.
Going further to our right, the mountain sort of gentles out a little bit. There’s a spur that projects out into the valley quite some ways. Where the spur meets the mountain, the slope is gentler, at an angle to the actual mountain, but there’s a little valley nestled there that is green and has a lot of conifer and fir in it.
To our left, the path becomes very narrow. In fact, below us its literally a cliff right there, and there is a much narrower path at that point. It’s much more distinct as a path. It’s 10 ft. from the edge, which is a sheer drop at that point, to some buildings. These buildings are more or less built into the side of the mountain. They’re half-projecting out from the mountain, and I remember the architecture of what they’re built up. They’re just ordinary buildings, vut they’re old. They’re painted white, they’re wood, the painting is a little weathered, like you might see in an older beach resort town or even just some older buildings in the West. It has a very distinct, evocative feel to me, and there are little shops and things, little tourist stops.
Beyond that, further south, the terrain is different again. Flora and fauna are more what you’d expect on the side of a Wasatch Front mountain. It’s scrubby, with some grass. The rocks are more typical of that area also, and it’s not as steep overall. It’s more one continuous slope all the way from bottom to top with lots of outcroppings, promontories, and projections. It’s an overall steady continual rise. In that area, there’s not as much going on, but there are a few homes and stuff. We are staying–we don’t live there, but we ourselves are staying in a stone house on top of a hill there. For whatever reason (it’s odd enough that I even noticed this in part of the dream), they never attack up that way, so this warfare goes on for a while. Under siege, after this has ground on for a month or two, I’m on watch, and I notice them massing to go up to the valley to our right. We sound the alarm, and we scramble and go fight them off over there. Very difficult to do, but we succeed, and they never try that again.
Even though they’re only attacking us in this very set frontal way and we have the slope to help us, it’s a very desperate struggle. We’re badly outnumbered. It’s just probably my impression but it seems like there are only one or two hundred of us and thousands of students from the institution below. As the fighting drags on, our director becomes more and more depressed and withdrawn, almost catatonic. He more or less responds when spoken to, but he’s not making decisions. He’s not organizing things.
Our students, a lot of them, really radicalize. There are these violent little fanatic cults that a number of them form, and they’re not just fanatic about the warfare, they have just gone crazy in a lot of ways. Just a core of us, some students, some of the older people like me, are still dedicated to winning the warfare, without going into this odd cult-like behavior, which has them doing things that are sometimes counterproductive. We hang on by the skin of our teeth. We’re very hungry, and then we win.
The end.
A very perplexing dream.
