Dream journey: I was parked at a convenience store and people I knew were across the lot and I went over to talk to them. I thought it would be a brief discussion but it took a half hour, ending with our looking for the new tires I had bought (4 for $130), admiring the tires on the wrong cars first. When I got to the car I was by myself as the rest of the group threw in the towel on the tire search. Then one of the people from the van next to me was in my car, which was left unlocked with the windows open. When he saw me he and the others got into the van quickly and started to drive away. I asked them for my wallet and they gave it back to me. Despite this incriminating act of consideration, I pursued the car on foot, trying in vain to see and memorize the license plate, following them into a large field adjoining the convenience store that led to the lodge of an alternative community that emigrated from Europe in the early 19th Century and was currently inhabited by aging hippies. The van was part of a group that was trying to take the lodge by force, but to their dismay the alternative community was founded on the virtues of hunting and they were good shots. I ran into the middle of the dirt field after the van and found myself in range of the shootout, stood there for a few moments and then ran behind a metal fence 20 feet away where others had taken shelter. Behind the metal fence there was a path to the lodge, and by the time I got there the shoot out was over, though some of the intruders were alive. The lodge members were friendly and nonchalant and showed me a map of their former territory, when they “would hunt freely a wide swath of plains encompassing hundreds of miles.” A skeleton wearing cowboy gear who lives in a coffin nailed vertically onto the door walked up to me and hugged me. One police car arrived and made arrests. I was hoping that the police would let me see if I could recover any stolen items so I ran up to where they were, about 300 feet from the lodge. I had my hands up but they yelled at me to say where I was and not move. Later, Mitt Romney was explaining the intrusive aspects of the Patriot Act in a stump speech.