The lake and the larch-root tree

This was a sort of amorphous dream, neither very visual nor very verbal, but I got the general idea.

There was a small lake and growing near it a very tall tree called a “larch-root tree.” A magician wanted to move both of these to a distant location, so he caused each of them to collapse into a little cylindrical capsule, about the diameter of a 12-gauge shotgun shell but only half as long. He put the two capsules in the pocket of his robe and left.

When he arrived at the new location, he made the capsules expand again into a lake and a larch-root tree. However, he lacked the understanding to do this properly. Their original configuration had been stable, but the new one was not. Something about their relative position made it possible for the larch-root tree to suck up all the water in the lake, and in no time the lake was completely gone.

The magician had definitely not been expecting this, and his facial expression made it clear that it threw a spanner in his plans.

There were a few follow-up dreams revisiting this event and explaining its significance, but I can’t remember any of them.

Note added: About two hours after posting the above, I read this in Swamplandia! by Karen Russell:

Melaleuca quinquenervia was an exotic invasive, an Australian tree imported to suck the Florida swamp dry (p. 96).

That’s a pretty tight sync with the dream, in which a tree sucks a lake dry after being relocated to a new environment.