the most beautiful dream

I am at Trysull Road, in the house where I grew up. I am there alone, it seems as if everyone has left, I think I am locking the place up to leave it behind.

I go out into the back garden, it was a beautiful big garden with plenty of trees (apple, poplar, cherry) and a hedge. I walk up to the 'wilder' part of the garden (the bit that was always slightly overgrown) and there I meet:

Fox! A beautiful, large, stately, golden fox. He emanates wisdom and protection as he smiles at me kindly - it is the spirit of fox. I feel his presence in my dream, communicating something to me beyond what I am seeing. He seems to be surrounded by an aura of golden light.

I move on an my attention is drawn over the fence into next doors garden. This garden was a big vegetable plot, owned by an elderly widow Mrs Jones. As a child I used to climb up into the poplar tree and slide over into her plot with great excitement and nervousness. Me and my friends believed her to be a witch and we would look for evidence in her garden, wondering what purposes the many plants she grew might be put to...

I look over the fence and see - lots more animals! I have a set of native american indian animal medicine cards and the animals are all drawn from this set. I can't remember them all, there were so many, but I remember seeing rabbit, and moose, and I think there was badger or skunk too? Maybe a deer. They come over to greet me, as if they have been waiting for me. I feel their presence as spirit, not just as a fleeting chimera or image.

As I am locking up my home in my dream to depart for somewhere else, I have a sense that the animals have come out to tell me that they were there with me in my childhood - in the 'witches garden' - and have been ever since. The house at Trysull Road was sold in 2001 - but in my dream life I have never, till this moment, ever left it. In fact in many many dreams I have been looking and looking to find my way BACK there: perhaps this dream marks a moment of psychological departure.

The fox in my medicine cards is a guardian and protector, watching unobtrusively over it's family, creating a safe place for it's children to play. The fox family is often also to be seen on the move, so this animal totem is a good omen for travelers too.