dreams contd.

Walking through the corn stubble and pseudo-prairie scrub with a boy (tall) and a girl (short, with short dark hair).  We came upon dry creek beds with tall barbed-wire fences on each bank.  We climbed the fences, me placing my hands between the rusty barbs and scaling up and up, taller than the fence looked from the bottom.  We walked in the sandy channels with steep walls of dark earth on either side, trees leaning overhead with their roots exposed.  We emerged on a freshwater beach and waded out into the warm, green water.  Someone said, "This water goes to the ocean."

Reflecting now, I think I was with my brother and sister; we used to play in the dry creeks at home when I was little.

Non-dream memory, associated:

My brother and I had a special "fort" made from this chamber formed by tree roots that became a sort of cave when the floodwater washed the dirt away in the riverbed.  Our mom had this "ruby" the size of a second knuckle, probably part of a gaudy broken earring or necklace but to us it was precious.  We put it in a small soap box lined with cotton from pill bottles and buried it in the tree cave, our secret.  I think we forgot about it for a few months, then I went back and dug it up on my own.  The cardboard box had almost dissolved away but the ruby was still there.  I don't know what happened to it after that.