I was the connecting link that somehow lived both
lives.
Early in my childhood I learned that nuts came from the
grocer, berries from the fruit man; but before ever
that knowledge was mine, in my dreams I picked nuts
from trees, or gathered them and ate them from the
ground underneath trees, and in the same way I ate
berries from vines and bushes. This was beyond any
experience of mine.
I shall never forget the first time I saw blueberries
served on the table. I had never seen blueberries
before, and yet, at the sight of them, there leaped up
in my mind memories of dreams wherein I had wandered
through swampy land eating my fill of them. My mother
set before me a dish of the berries. I filled my
spoon, but before I raised it to my mouth I knew just
how they would taste. Nor was I disappointed. It was
the same tang that I had tasted a thousand times in my
sleep.
Snakes? Long before I had heard of the existence of
snakes, I was tormented by them in my sleep. They
lurked for me in the forest glades; leaped up,
striking, under my feet; squirmed off through the dry
grass or across naked patches of rock; or pursued me
into the tree-tops, encircling the trunks with their
great shining bodies, driving me higher and higher or
farther and farther out on swaying and crackling
branches, the ground a dizzy distance beneath me.
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