I am driving along Lakeshore Drive in Marquette, Michigan. It’s modern. I’m in my ’97 Honda. This visual has occured a number of time in my dreams: I’m driving along Lakeshore and the waves swell up on the lake, eventually they overtake the road. Then, I am surrounded by 20 ft. waves. Anyone who’s been around this sort of water knows the terror I’m talking about.
Before it’s too late, I see a long, metal breakwall and there’s enough road for me to drive up onto it. As I’m driving onto the breakwall, which only fits my car, I see a 40×40 landing pad to my left where a small black jet is unloading a very small helicopter. Three or four Scandinavians are moving large plastic boxes from the pad to a tall silo-like structure that reaches up from the northern end of the breakwall. As I notice them, the waves kick up and I decide that if I am going to live, I need to get out of my vehicle. I grab a few things and run toward the structure. The sky is getting dark and grey like a wet stone. The waves are too large and are starting to overtake the breakwall.
I fall into the water and Ray Torres is in a small square pool, looking at me, soaked, worried. I get a position next to him, our backs on 45 degree angles against the metal. There is a large wooden box right before us. We are using our legs to hold it in place. The waves kick harder. I tell Ray to help me keep this box forward but the waves are too much.
A second before it is too late, I grab the hand of one of these Scandinavian dudes (a 30 year old dude with yellow hair and a wetsuit) and jump into the small door at the bottom of the tall structure.
I am inside the tall metal structure. It is probably two stories. There are windows. I’m in there alone with the Scandinavian guy. The entire structure is swaying back and forth and it is starting to fill up with water. We climb a yellow metal ladder. We are hanging on for our lives.
I look out a small, round glass window and see a sea that I’ll only see in a dream. Dark aqua walls of water with whitecaps crashing, one after the other. Gullies and peaks the size of buildings. There is an unrelenting sense of futility. Nothing I, or the Scandinavian guy can do would remove us from the center of Gitchee Gumee’s wrath.
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I wake up on a floor of green carpet. I’m wearing a tan t-shirt with some orange logo on it. Jeff Pilditch, Ray and several other friends are there. There are bruises under my left eye and on my forehead. My body is sore. I can barely stand. I am in a hallway. I hear people talking and I walk down the hallway and enter a medium sized room with windows looking out onto Lake Superior, which has calmed. There is a table with food platters: pita and hummus, vegetables, things rolled up in ham, coffee, wine, beer, etc. I walk up to the table and look at it. I’m still not sure what is going on. I see Jeff and I say, “The last thing I remember is being in the tower…and…” And he replies, “Yeah, you knocked your head. You passed out, man.”
I look at him, and walk around this building, which seems to be some sort of lodge. All of us are wearing the same tan t-shirt, with an orange logo on the front.