HARNESS UP

Last night I dreamed a dream; I do that a lot. When I was younger; in my 60’s, sleeping well was taken for granted. If I dreamt at all it didn’t wake me and when I awoke I couldn’t remember anything, just that I had a dream. Now I close my eyes wondering what is playing on the dream-screen tonight. I have friends, one in particular who puts great stock in dreams and what they mean; spends hours trying to deconstruct them. I lend a willing ear but don’t try that myself; was it Twain who more or less said, “Keep quiet and people think you’re crazy. Speak up and confirm their suspicions.” But waking up with a disturbing dream is more the norm in my 70’s than sleeping through. Disturbing doesn’t mean bad, just that I go from spectator to participant and start asking questions. 

Last night’s dream had me with other people hiking along an unfamiliar trail. Long story short, the man in front of me was barefooted. A rattle snake came out of the brush and went after him, all stretched out, mouth open like a thin torpedo. Immediately I disengaged, defaulting to logic. “Snakes don’t do that, can’t do that. They have to undulate to move at all (I know, I know - some snakes creep straight ahead with unobservable, wave like rib walking but this one was catching up to the barefoot who was running hard.) Neither do they stretch out with mouth open like cows stretching their necks through the fence for greener grass.” My eyes were still closed but I was conscious. I thought I would fall asleep in time to catch the second feature but along the way I thought of a cat we had when I was a kid. Who knows how that works? Calico was a black, white & rusty-red spotted barn cat, a good mouser and my mother’s favorite. What made her remarkable were three extra toes on both front feet. When she had kittens we were anxious to know if any of those little fur-balls had extra toes. 

I wasn’t asleep yet, just drifting but I know about extra toes. They occur not frequently but not uncommon either. Then the brain shifts gears and I’m clear eyed; amazing how it makes course corrections without warning or permission. Trying to remember; was it D. Lieberman or E.O. Wilson who used cat’s toes as an example of gene mutations? Mutations that occur in body cells can not be passed on but in the DNA of reproductive cells they can. Once done it becomes the norm for that critter and is available to its descendants. Lieberman and Wilson are world class scientist/researchers. One, a leading evolutionary biologist while the other is the world’s leading authority on ants, and other social insects. Their work overlaps, not on purpose but when you are reading them simultaneously you can not, not notice. 

So then I’m thinking about the overlap. Adaptation is about being more/better equipped at reproduction than your competitors. When times get hard, endangered species hard, having a reproductive advantage is the difference between your DNA making it on to succeeding generations or not. I don’t think cats with extra toes have an advantage but then neither are they a handicap. As long as the species enjoys stable growth and sufficient resources it doesn’t matter. If and when it becomes a limiting factor, the advantage of 5 or 8 toes, whichever; the other will, over time, be culled out of the gene pool. I’m wishing I could just wipe my curious conscious clean and go back to sleep but not remembering if it was Lieberman or Wilson won’t let me. 

A couple or more distractions and mental leap frogs drag me off in new directions and I stop resisting. You can’t remember the moment you fall sleep. If you are conscious enough to remember, you are too alert to drop off; duh. So I can’t say how it went from there except that the radio woke me at 6:00 a.m. I identify with stories from when fire engines were horse drawn. At the end of their career, those horses were retired with benefits but any time the alarm went off, they jumped to the fore, ready to harness up and charge out the gate. I like getting up in the morning, even when I’d rather go back to sleep. I may put it off for a few minutes but I don’t need another bell to get me going. Dreams can be good and slumber is its own reward but I prefer a sense of purpose that comes with coffee and a task. Making the leap from old fire horses to me waking up is a stretch but so was the barefoot guy and the snake.