It was nice to wake up this morning to gray skies blanketed over a strong flurry of falling snows outside. It was another true winter day, which I find a really enjoy as an alternative to our prevalent good weather in Albuquerque.

Before I awoke to see the snowy skies, though, I was sitting on the deck of a high wooden scaffold in the bosque near the Rio Grande River. It was late afternoon in my dream, and the sky was a deep blue. The Sandia mountains were golden in the strong sunlight, and I was not alone. Four other men sat next to me in simple wooden chairs as well, and my spirit was in turmoil as I was evidently on this high platform in moments before my execution. I did not have a sense of what my crime was. And I didn’t clearly know how I was going to die. But I did know that I wa in my last moments on earth, and my brain went briefly into overdrive collecting thoughts of “Never will I” and “Never again will I”. It was like in a distinct moment in that dream, my impending death came into focus, and my terminus into the black was guaranteed.

I closed my eyes and swam in my despairing thoughts for a long moment, and then, thankfully, recognized it was a dream and woke up.

It probably didn’t help that I had fallen asleep reading the chapter in To Kill A Mockingbird where Atticus’ client in a local jail is almost seized and lynched.

That may have had something to do with it.

I was glad I woke up to the hum of the humidifier and the dull white haze of snow out my room window.