Texas Oil Wells

[kmusestlou]

I had a dream that I was driving down a long empty Texas highway with some other people in the car. The area was desert-like and flat except that we were going downhill very slightly. On the right-hand side of the highway, we saw huge billowing clouds of smoke with some orange fire, and small twinkling orange balls of fire within the smoke. I knew that an oil well was on fire and I wondered how that happened and why they just let it burn. The smoke and fireballs rose over the highway like a living thing. The living thing wasn't a particular animal, it was more that the smoke was very dense and it didn't disperse like smoke normally does--it held together, and it seemed to move in a sinuous fashion across the highway. I wouldn't say that the smoke had a consciousness or personality in the dream, but that it was simply there and very ominous in the way it drifted over the highway. I felt angry and disgusted that anyone could let this happen, and worried about other things catching on fire due to the "fireballs" within the smoke. Maybe a better word would be sparks like what rises from a campfire, but long-lived sparks that lingered and did not go out right away.