I dreamed I was homeless in Western Canada. I walked through a small town and then saw, up a long and steep slope, a cabin with a lot of lights on. I climbed up to the cabin and a saw that it was a "reality" TV show, with the contestants living in the cabin. Just as I arrived, one of the contestants had been kicked off of the show and was leaving, so I decided to slip into the cabin and see whether I could take his place. I was tired and wanted to see if I could rest some place warm for a while.
The other contestants were mostly pretty thin and wiry. The host, who looked somewhat like Jon Voigt, started poking my in the sides and saying he thought I was too flabby to succeed on the show. I struggled with him, at first just to get him to stop poking me, but then, in order to counter his suggestion that I was physically too weak to compete in the show, I managed to pick him up off of the ground, and for a moment I even held him in the air over my head with one hand. He did not make any sign that he was impressed, but he also didn't tell me to leave. I began to wonder whether his disparaging remarks, and his lack of comment on my show of physical strength, had been some attempt to psychologically manipulate me.
I never figured out just exactly what the competition was on the show, what contests we had to go through to decide who stayed on the show and who had to leave. Did the contestants vote each other off of the show? Did they go through long grueling treks through the cold mountains? Some of them seemed to be very absorbed in some books about wildlife. Whether this was a practical interest directly related to the competition on the show, or if it just happened to be an interest of some, not all, of the contestants, and their preferred reading material during down-time, I couldn't tell. I had no idea what was awaiting me here. But quickly, I began to feel like a prisoner. I noticed that there was a high fence surrounding a large area around the cabin, an area extending almost all the way down the slope to the little town I'd just walked through.
Looking at the other contestants, I began to wonder whether all of them really were athletically lean, or if they were malnourished. Talking with them, I learned that all they were given to eat was dog food, which was waiting for them in a small shack partway down the slope toward the town whenever one of them got hungry enough to choke some of it down.
I didn't dispute that I could stand to lose a few pounds, but dog food was not my idea of a good dietary plan. Also, I reflected upon what little else I know about "reality" shows, and most of that didn't seem healthy for the contestants either. I decided to try to get out of there. I was worried that at this point I might be locked inside the fence, held there against my will. I left the cabin and started down the long steep slope back toward the town. Snowed covered everything, it was packed on the path I was following. The light outside was dim, verging on dark. Many lights were on in the town below, white lights with an orange-ish tint. I didn't know whether it was dim outside because dusk was approaching, or because it was winter, or because it was cloudy, or from some combination of the above.
When I got to the gate in the fence closest to the town, I saw with relief that it didn't appear to be locked or guarded. But I woke up before I actually got out.
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