That Other Dimension

  I dream a lot now, and when I first wake up, the dream is clear in my mind. I want to remember it, but when I try it slips away, like a thin film of oil over water, spreading away into oblivion.
   I remember the dream I had last night.
       We were traveling, Dave and I, along a road. My dreams never have a clear or noted beginning, so I don't know where or why we were on that road. But the trip was fairly long and arduous in some way until suddenly we came to the top of a hill we didn't realize we were even climbing and saw the most beautiful sight we both had ever seen.We were young and everything was aglow. The view was spread out in both directions, bright, shining, sparkling. Now I might see the scene unfolding as a " shining city on the hill, " though I didn't think that in my dream.
    We commented to each other that we hadn't known the road was uphill, and we remarked on the beauty of what had unfolded before us. We stopped  our car  and walked to the end of the road., as far as it was open. There were buildings to the left and to the  right, with several people a distance away. But across  the road was a strand of low-strung barbed wire fence, which may have been why we had stopped. The road continued on, beyond the barbed wire. We approached the wire. It was obvious someone didn't want us to proceed any further. But Dave, being Dave, stepped over the fence. I noticed, though the wire was only about a foot off the ground, he didn't quite clear it unscathed; the wire caught, harmlessly, on the leg of the khaki pants he was wearing.
    As I had anticipated might happen, a man, elderly and clad in walking shorts, came out of the closest house on the right. He slowly approached us, carrying in casual manner what seemed like a weapon from the past, a long pole with some type of appurtenance on top, maybe an implement for loosening soil. In my dream and now, I tried in vain  to think of what it's called.
   He informed us, in a civil enough manner, why he had strung the wire at the end of the road, that it was not a through road, that  they didn't want people passing through, and that anyone who crossed that  wire would be cited, would receive a legal summons.
    Dave, apparently growing tired, walked back to the car, a distance away. The man's wife had come on the scene by now and I was talking to her. She was younger and more  amiable than her husband, and we talked for some time. During our conversation, I remember saying that where we came from,, barbed wire was illegal in village settings, and so would be the rather wicked-looking implement which her husband had propped beside the fence. I recounted a long-ago  memory of a young girl, a friend of Sandy's, who climbed over the pasture fence behind her house. The fence was topped with barbed wire and the girl, about seven years old,  was severely injured when she fell onto the fence, 
    We chatted on, for so long that Dave, tired of waiting in the car, walked over to see why I was delayed. I asked him if he had my camera with him. He did, and I told him to take pictures of the barbed wire and that stick. While he was doing so, the woman approached me and said she didn't think Dave  would have thought of taking pictures if he hadn't been prompted to do so. She sounded as if she'd been betrayed.