I dreamt last night that I could fly.

I only needed to catch the wind just right in order for me to lift from the ground and sail away into the sky. And once I was airborne, I could maintain the flight until I decided to land. I could sweep up and over the trees, around and through billowing clouds, and then dropping back toward the earth with incredible speed, I’d swoop under overpass bridges and powerlines and then rocket back into the atmosphere in preparation for another pass with the world below.

The landings took skill. Because I was always moving so quickly in my return to the earth, it usually took a dive, another brief incline in the midst of a very wide turn in order to slow down enough that I could touch down in a run.

This isn’t a new dream for me. I’ve been having it in one form or another since I was very young.

I don’t put a lot of stock in dream interpretation, but I do remember asking my psychology professor back in college what dreams of flight meant. He never gave me a straight answer, at least not one that I can fully recall, but I do remember him saying that dreams in which we find ourselves flying may mean that certain pressures – tethers in life that bind us to one struggle or another – have either been overcome, or we are merely wishing to be free from them, maybe even tip-toeing to the edge of a sense of rebelliousness in relation to them.

For the life of me, I can’t think of anything in particular that I’ve overcome recently. I can think of quite a bit, however, that I wouldn’t mind shaking loose these days. In fact, today’s the last day of my vacation and I’m already starting to feel a bit queasy because it’s coming to an end.

Who knows? Maybe my dream was some sort of backward celebration of being set free from being free.

That’s a really confused form of rebellion, wouldn’t you say? Well, so is the Rebel Yell Small Batch Rye edition.

In the nose, there’s an initial energy to this whiskey’s rye. It leaves the impression that a sturdy wind is just now coming down from the horizon, passing through the rye plains and over fresh coffee plants in the neighboring field, drawing closer to pick you up and send you soaring.

But when it arrives, you just can’t seem to catch it. It’s moving all around you with a delicate ease of minimal sour and buttery nougat, both of which just won’t let you lift off.

It rolls all the way through to a medium finish of easy cinnamon, still lacking the bluster you would have expected from a gale calling itself “Rebel Yell.” More like “Rebel Awkwardly Loud.”

By no means does this whiskey set you free from the earth and carry you into the more heavenly drafts. It is sufficient for a dream in which you are sitting on your front porch sipping an American straight rye whiskey that you kind of wish was a Scotch.