Mainly, my nature related dreams seem to revolve around my camera breaking down right when I’m about to photograph something extremely cool (and usually nonexistent).
In one of my recent dreams, I was trying to photograph some brightly colored lichens and mosses while on a hike, but the lens of my camera kept expanding five feet out and I would have to push it back in.
In another, I was surrounded by spiders of all different shapes and sizes (and most with the wrong number of legs). Some were even crawling on me, but my camera was completely out of batteries, and I couldn’t get a single photo of them.
Has anyone else experienced strange or interesting nature related dreams? Please share!
I’ve had a few where I’m Herping in different countries but find snakes that shouldn’t be there. For example, there was one where I was Herping in Australia but found a Plains Hognose.
I don’t usually dream much, and I don’t mind that either since when I do have them they tend to be a bit odd.
However, I always get frustrated at the beginning of the season when I don’t find very many snakes yet, despite how much I look, and how many moulted skins I find. I also find different species than those I would get call outs to remove, for example i’ve only ever found 1 rinkhals in the bush, despite it being common for call-outs.
Anyway, in one of my few nature related dreams, I walked over a hill into an open plain, where suddenly there were thousands of rinkhals, all stood up, and somehow moulting at the same time. In that moment I felt quite uncomfortable, and didn’t know what to do.
Make of that dream what you will.
I kept a dream journal when I was a graduate student in the tropics. One time we were staying in a forest camp in hammocks in Nicaragua. One night I dreamt I was covered in hundreds or thousands of insects. I awoke thrashing in my hammock and the little sticks that held the mosquito netting expanded had broken so that the netting was laying on my exposed skin. I realized belatedly that the sensation of insects on my skin was the mosquito netting. But after I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out if the thrashing had broken the sticks, or if the sticks had broken causing that particular dream meaning sequence of events was peculiar.
Another time I was in the field in Oregon sleeping in the back of my truck. It was hot that day so I left back of the truck open. I had a dream that there was a large rodent crawling on me and that it was slowly crawling up my legs, onto my stomach, and then onto my arms, which were crossed across my chest and that I couldn’t move. But then I woke up and realized that there was a large rodent sitting on my chest, that it wasn’t a dream, but that suddenly I was able to move. I quickly raised my arm and flung a wood rat across the truck, which quickly scurried off into the darkness.
I have had a ridiculous number of dreams involving mushrooms/fungi. Usually it’s me finding something really cool, and/or photographing it. Just the other day I had a dream where morels the size of me were popping up in my backyard!
All those dreams are usually about mushrooms I really want to find (boletes, morels, etc.) or very strange alien looking mushrooms.
My subconscious clearly has nothing better to think about while I’m asleep?
EDIT: As an example, I was up in some mountains and I thought I saw a king bolete, so I went over to investigate it, and ended up falling halfway down the side of a cliff :( I also find that the frequency of these dreams increase when there’s not as many mushrooms to be found (winter and summer).
I used to have herp collecting dreams when I did a lot of herp survey work. Usually the animal was getting away from me, or there were a lot of them in one spot, too many to grab. Presumably the result of unsuccessful collecting on a given day.
Once I was sleeping on the ground out in the wild and had a dream that a cat had crawled up on my sleeping bag down near my knees. Not unusual, as I used to have a cat that liked to sleep on my legs at night. Then I realized, as I suddenly came awake, that I no longer had a cat and I wasn’t at home. I pulled my sleeping bag down and saw the business end of a skunk, which ran off as soon as I moved.
Dream while working on my bird-related graduate research:
I ate a poisonous plant and had to be taken to the hospital. After they pumped my stomach, the doctor ran some tests. She told me I have a neurodegenerative allergy to birds. My loss of cognitive function was likely why I had eaten the poisonous plant in the first place. If I even think about birds or birding, I could continue to do irreparable damage to my brain.
I have a lot of dreams about succeeding/failing to find birds that I’m looking for. I remember having more than one dream where I saw a Red-shouldered Hawk and got very excited only to realize when I woke up that it didn’t count for my lifelist…
Yes! I dream all winter long about mothing. I go out to check my moth lights, and there are all sorts of cool species. These dreams are usually good, but occasionally I have nightmares that I overslept and the birds ate all my moths. (Which is something I never allow to happen in real life!) The curious thing is that I only have these dreams in wintertime. It has been that way for years. It’s like I get my mothing fix in real life the other 3 seasons, but my subconscious mind misses it in winter.
About once a year I will have an extremely vivid dream that I am a bird flying above somewhere I once lived. I can control my flight and swoop higher or lower. I see people I recognize and places I love but nobody seems to see me. The dreams are soundless but are not dangerous dreams but nonetheless disconcerting because they are extremely vivid; it takes me quite a bit when I wake up to process and be able to begin my day.
I had a dream once where I went birding (In Japan I think) and an obnoxious “twitcher”-type guy kept taking my binoculars/getting in my way when was trying to watch waterfowl.
Another time, I had a dream where I was walking on a beach and found this skull that looked like a cross between a lion and a whale. It was the size of a car, and I could go inside of it. The skull was in the disgusting stage of decomposition, and my brain replicated that pretty well lol. That was a really fun dream though!
And just last night, I had a dream where I was working at a bacteria research facility, and the director of the facility decided we should use honey instead of agar gelatin as a substrate. The dream was centered around me trying to convince people that honey is an antibacterial, and wouldn’t work as a substrate for growing bacteria, but the microbiologists kept telling me that the honey substrate would work “because things stick to honey”.
The honey got all over lab equipment and ruined a bunch of glass slides and a microscope. I think some forensic scientists came from somewhere and said that the honey would hold hairs in place to view under a microscope. Overall, it was a really odd dream, and kind of frusterating lol
A few months back I had a very frustrating iNat dream. I was at home and my wife told there was an unusual bird perched on the back fence. I went to look and saw it was a small species of Pterodactyl. I hastily pulled out my iPhone to take a picture, but got a message that the phone needed an urgent upgrade. The Pterodactyl flew off before the upgrade was anywhere near complete. This is really just an extension of my real life experience trying to photograph birds with a mobile phone. I really need to get a decent camera. (Did Pterodactyls actually perch on things?).
I often have dreams about IDing observations on iNat, and I often spend a lot of time looking through sources and finding amazing info, being able to ID some rare species. Sometimes I spend a long time going through IDs and sources. Then I wake up, feeling like I just spent hours doing something to end up not having done anything.