In my dream, I am standing rather high above a river valley -- looking pretty much straight upriver or downriver. Can't tell which. It's a beautiful scene with the wide river nestled between to gentle grassy slopes with an occasional stand of trees. There may have been a few houses, but not many.
Into this lovely image, I see a large passenger airplane flying breathtakingly low. It's maybe a quarter mile away in front of me. Its path is directly over the water and following the path of the river as well. It's maybe 5 or 10 feet above the water as it flies. I can't hear any sound from the plane, so I imagine that the engines are off and the plane is simply flying "deadstick."
As I watch in both admiration and trepidation, the plane gently drops a little lower until it skims the surface of the water. I can tell exactly where the plane has touched down, then rises off the surface again by the wake it leaves on the surface of the water.
It touches down a second time -- much like the first -- and then a third time, where it stays on the surface of the water. It occurs to me that the pilot has done these "touchdowns" in an effort to lose speed, so that it will come to rest at the slowest possible velocity.
The pilot is wonderfully successful: not only has the plane avoided capsizing or pitchpoling into the water, but it has skidded to a stop up against one of the banks of the river. Everyone on board should be perfectly safe.
Change of scene: I am now standing in a crowd of people who are either passengers just off the plane or passers-by that want to know what's going on or who knows what all else. There's mild chatter among all these people as they mill around. No one seems to know what's happening or what to do next. I simply want to know what happened to cause the plane to make this forced landing and congratulate the captain if I can, but at this point, rumors and made-up stories are likely to abound. So getting valid information seems unlikely.
I then realize that I'm on the opposite side of the river from where I started. And there are no apparent bridges that will allow me to get back to where I belong. And swimming across the river is not an option.
I find myself inside a small concrete structure without windows or doors. A structure that seems to be at the edge of the crowd. Openings for both windows and doors, but they are wide open to the air. There are a few people milling around nearby, but nothing like the crowd outside.
On the concrete floor, there is a channel cut into the floor. There is water running quietly through the channel. I know this is river water I'm looking at -- flowing with the current of the entire river. I realize that if I can get to the other side of this channel, I can easily return to where I belong, but the channel is something like 2 feet across, and if I misstep, I could be swept away. As I ponder what to do, a man standing nearby approaches the channel and easily steps to the other side. Easy peasy.
So I step across the channel. More easy peasy.
I wake up.
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