I had this dream last night

So - I had this dream last night - actually it was part of a much larger episode which involved some intrigue the details of which have unfortunately escaped me even though when I awoke it all seemed so vivid. Such are dreams. The bit I do remember - we were driving, probably Ali and I, and shortly after entering what I knew would be a long and very dark tunnel climbing up inside a mountain, we saw light on the right and parked to investigate. It turned out to be a sort of natural viewing gallery part way up the mountain side which was almost vertical here. The ground dropped straight down below and to the left but to the right, curving away and on the same level, was what was probably a man-made canal running along a ledge. To the right of the viewing gallery there was a sort of natural cistern full to a good three feet of pure water which I figured somehow communicated with this canal. A family was approaching along the path to the left of the canal and thus between it and the sheer drop: I took a photograph zooming into them, and also some wide-angle of the general vista but realised that the camera could neither capture the beauty nor the wideness of the place. Sadly these photographs did not survive the dream. The family had a dog who was nosing about the undergrowth as dogs do, but it lost its footing and started sliding down towards the drop. It tried in vain to arrest its flight but then dropped over the edge, maybe 100m to the valley below. I say maybe because my eyes seemed to zoom in so that I saw the dog, seemingly dead, quite clearly. And then it tried to stand up but fell back, clearly badly injured. I wondered how the owner would descend to sort it out.

But the most stunning part of the dream was the incredible detail of the panorama. I found I was savouring every part as my eyes scanned the image. Just as you do in reality when suddenly faced with a stunning panorama, like when Kate and I reached that summit near Beckenried in Switzerland.

How do dreams do this? I have met with this sort of thing before. Whilst running this afternoon I paused to look up into the branches of a tree and thought again - such amazing detail. And yet of course the human eye only sees a relatively small solid-angle of clearness - everything outside this central vision is not well focused and therefore is not detailed. As the eye scans the image the brain does a good job in re-creating the detail or at least gives the impression of detail. Most of us would be unable to describe that detail either in words or drawing, because perhaps it exists only in our fancy.

And so perhaps I did not actually see, in my dream, the detail I thought I saw. Certainly all I can recall now is a valley of great proportions with hills or mountains rising in the distance, and of course the mountain side apparent on the right with its canal (where the canal went to in the mountain I cannot say, this detail was missing along with so many others). The vista was certainly in colour, bright colour, I can remember that much.