Hey I_am very interesting dream. To be in a forest sometimes means that we are in a transition phase, that there is intrigue and mystery about, as well as life in general. The small hill could mean a slight bit of resistance on this transitional time or your endeavors into intrigue. Smoke and fire can mean many things, passion, destruction, pure energy to name a few. It sounds like you might be coming to grips with some changes in your life and someone here at PA more then likely shares your passion. It sounds like you're a bit afraid of sharing dreams due to your shadow experiences. Hence the reason you felt the need to build a protective/observatory tower of powerful grounding material like earth, life (sticks/wood), & other crystals. That's fine as it will help to keep you grounded and give you confidence to speak to other things should you share a dream again. That "shadow" is generally an unrecognized or unrealized aspect of ourself that is trying to make itself known. Although there is this whole shadow people phenomenon too which is a possibility as well.
If you remember any other details about the dream I may be able to go into it more, such as any colors, smells, temperature, if there was a time of day, etc
here's a bit more elaboration of some of the tips I was talking about on the interview:
Our subconscious speak associatively. Meaning that it remembers and projects images to you based on how you associate things. So if have a dream of cheese cake, and love cheese cake, I'm sure you'll gobble that up and think; hey that was a great dream! but if you hate cheese cake, that dream will repel you. But at the same time, "cake" is also associated to food, sustenance, nourishment, celebration, sweet, baking, just to name a few, and I haven't even talked about "cheese"
See how everything can get so convoluted? That's why it's important to really know who you are and what your subconscious associations really are. Either way, the more you try to lucid dream, the more these things will make themselves known to you.
astral projection means : projecting your consciousness to a location other then what you would identify as the physical body's location. Time and place don't matter.
Remote View means : gathering information from a far.
Yes astral projection and remote viewing can border on each other, but generally remote viewing doesn't involve any "front loading" or any prior knowledge of the target, or very specific knowledge to determine unknowns. Astral projection is more of like you deciding to go the beach and you had an interesting or relaxing time.
How to build a dream through intention, one method:
Write down your intention on a piece of paper such as: I want to see the great pyramids
if time period is important then write that down too. If you want to experience the transit to the location, write that down too.
Put it somewhere you'll remember, some place convenient. Or you can also put it in an obvious place if you feel you need or want extra conscious reminders or "markers" as I call them too.
Before you go to bed, reiterate that desire or intention to project (or lucid dream, as it's the same process) along with some kind of empowering statement like the one I suggest: I remember my dreams & feel rested & energized
and see what happens. If you don't have success the first time, try again. IF you remember having any dream, write it down. The more you make dreaming a part of the conscious reality (not like you have to think about it all the time, just a quick journal entry is fine)the more success you'll have because you'll be creating more "markers" to help wake yourself up during the "indexing"(or daily review) phase of sleep.
You might see your intention shown to you again in a different way. For instance, you may not "wake up" and "project" to giza, but you might wake up the next morning remembering you saw a post card from Egypt. That means you're getting close in the very least, if you're lucky, you might just have a full blown completely lucid projection.
Or sometimes you might be dreaming and you'll see a that postcard maybe, not really aware you're dreaming, but that is an oppotunity to remember: Hey! I'm dreaming! Oh yeah! I want to go to Giza!
and off you go
Yes it is as easy as a thought there.