Ruminations after skipping daily nutrition

Kirk Ericson | Mar 09, 20230

“I was a willow last night in a dream

I bent down over a clear running stream.” — “Crazy on You,” Heart

The first time I climbed Mount Ellinor was around the turn of the millennium, and it must have been spring because it was warm and deep snow was still packed in the chute. I was climbing with Darren Samuelson, who was the outdoor writer for The Olympian newspaper at the time.

Darren and I had a sunny time clomping to the top and glissading to the bottom of that Olympic peak with the treeless crown. Not long afterward, Darren left for Washington, D.C., where he eventually got a reporting job for the news site Politico, which included a stretch covering Donald Trump in the White House.

I saw Darren again this week for the first time since he and his wife visited us about 10 years ago. Darren was wearing sunglasses, but the glass lens to cover his left eye was missing and I could see that his pupil was immobile in the upper-left corner of his eyeball. I thought, “I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed that eye of his before.”

Then I woke.

Sharing your dreams is a dummy’s exercise because it’s a 99% chance you’ll bore your audience, similar to vocalizing a comic strip you found funny or repeating a joke when you’re missing some of the parts.

But I’m giving it a shot here because the full dream Darren appeared in is the most unusual dream I’ve had in 63 years of having unusual dreams. And it’s a dream I’ve concluded was prompted by eating cereal at 3 a.m. — after having eaten zero food from Friday morning to early Monday morning, a total of 65 hours.

So, this dream has an interesting back story, which is all the rage these days.

I didn’t have a compelling reason to go without food for three days — I was only curious whether I could do it, and I was interested in the effects it would have on me. I didn’t do it to lose weight. In fact, the bathroom scale registered the same weight at the start and end, which is mystifying.

Resisting the urge to eat wasn’t difficult. If you give yourself an inflexible purpose for doing something hard, it’s easier. In this case, I was committed to writing about what I experienced. It’s difficult enough coming up with good ideas for newspaper columns, and I wasn’t going to waste a good one just because I wanted a bag of popcorn.

Here are a few things I learned:

■ Smelling food is a fiercer temptation than seeing food. The closest I came to aborting this column was while smelling popcorn in the movie theater on day three.

■ I had several ideas that were highly unusual for me — I believe the fashionable term now is “off brand.”

The first was, “I should get a new area rug for the living room and the color should be a muted red.” We’ve had the same rug for maybe 15 years and I’ve given zero thought to replacing it over 15 years.

The second idea was, “I should learn how to make homemade hash browns.” And I did.

The third idea: “I’ll make breakfast for the crew at the Journal on Wednesday.” John Lester, the publisher, has been making us breakfast on Wednesday mornings — our production day — for years.

Not profound ideas, but still unusual for me.

Physically, I had no problem until the moment I was awoken at 1 a.m. on Monday morning by a gurgling stomach and a sickly acidic sensation in my throat. Those symptoms didn’t ease for two hours, so I had a bowl of granola. Then I fell asleep …

I was in some nondescript hotel room and I could feel my body rising. I fought the sensation, but then I was aware I was dreaming and that I wouldn’t be hurt by falling. I can’t remember ever being aware I was dreaming while I was dreaming.

I started floating, spinning slowly like a gyroscope, without fear of falling. The scene changed to an open office space with cubicles, reminiscent of newspaper newsrooms you’ve likely seen in movies and TV shows. This display of space was also eerily similar to the IRS office in the movie “Everything, Everywhere All at Once,” which Mrs. Ericson and I watched Friday night.

As I floated and turned, I flowed through desks, and cubicle and office walls, and I saw the faces of some of the hundreds of people I’ve worked with at newspapers over the years. Then I settled at a desk, where I came face to face with Darren and his errant pupil.

I woke, feeling serene, maybe because I had just visited so many long-ago friends.

So here’s what I’d like to know: How can eating — after 65 hours of not eating — produce one of the most enchanting dreams of my life?

Somebody should get a grant for that study. I’ll volunteer.