If you are able to view this on a large enough screen, please note the words on  the building above the condos, “Alaska Dream Makers.” The sign takes my mind back to a night I spent in Tikigaq (Point Hope) on July 14, 2009 - my birthday. It was the first of several nights I slept in the home of my friend, Kunukowruk, known also as Pete Lisbourne, an artist of supreme talent with a deep love and passion for his homeland, both in present and ancient times and no concern at all about the potential business side of his talent. Before I went to sleep, he told me my bed for the night was his “dream couch,” a place where vivid dreams come to him whenever he sleeps there. One of the many vivid dreams I experienced on his couch involved a mastodon, a creature once common here. This was a true “Alaska Dream Maker” couch.   I don’t know what these condos are called, but I call them the “Dream Maker Condos.” I suspect most of the dreams they make involve the magical shriek of the train whistle as it echoes off mountain walls from every direction, the clickety clack and clatter of steel wheels on steel rails and of a thousand tiny little earth quakes as the train rumbles by. Photograph courtesy of Bill Hess