More than once – maybe many times, I haven’t counted – I dream of trying to navigate a difficult path through a massive road reconstruction project. It is always something that is so huge in scope that it is taking years to complete, and tests the patience and endurance of anyone who is forced to travel through it in order to get anywhere.

I’m not navigating a path though, really, because there simply is no path. Just a small mountain range of rocks, boulders, gravel, mud, and sometimes a chaotic and random assortment of earthen and manufactured materials (i’ve seen piping, metal railings, temporary wire grid platforms, steam works, etc), all without function or apparent purpose.

It’s supposed to be a work in progress, but seldom resembles one. It appears to be more of an apparently impossible task that will be finished “some day” and which is always held up by complications and errors and forces beyond anyone’s control, such as weather or geography.

I never see the people who are supposedly working on it. It is always just me, alone, struggling but determined to climb, shuffle, totter, fall, slip and trip my way through. It’s frustrating and hard but I have to do it. There is no alternative. And I never have the impression that there is a specific destination I’m moving toward.

These dreams are always of the rough forward motion of a continuously rough path for which I have to fight every step…and do.