Winter on Tibbets Lake

I dreamed that I was a young girl again...I was sitting on a deck that I both recognized and created, as I sometimes create things in my dreams. This deck,  its terracotta paint chipping off its splintering boards, belonged to my Grandparents' lakefront house in East Bay Township, Michigan.
I could smell the woods. Through the corner of my eye, I could see down the wooden staircase. It trickles down the steep hill their house sits on. I could also see and hear the lake water at the bottom of those stairs. I felt the wind tugging my hair into my eyes. It whistled around and above through the naked branches of the woods that surrounded my Grandparents' property. It was bitter cold. I could see and feel the crispness of the frost on the boards beneath me, where I sat. But the cold had no effect on me. The sky was gray with winter, and dimming with the lateness of the day.
Then I heard the rustling in the leaves: little feet pattering across the wood boards of the deck. I heard tiny little claws scraping too. I looked down at my hand when I felt a tickling, scratching that clearly indicated an insect was crawling. I saw several magnificently colored, horned beetles. I was the only source of warmth to them, in a hundred miles.
I picked them up, gently, and tucked them in my sleeves. I saw tiny little lizards, too cold and scared to move away very fast. Their little mouths opened wide in a fearful, threatening pose. I picked them up delicately and held them close to my skin. They warmed and became so comfortable they curled up in my clothes.
More of the many-colored beetles and brown-gray lizards began crawling out of the leaves and through the cracks in the deck. I invited them to crawl up my sleeves and the legs of my pants. I could feel them in my hair and around my neck. I warmed them and flicked away any parasites that might hurt them.

This was the first good dream I've had in a long time.