I bet you have a perfectly adequate grasp in practice! Being able to put words to something is… a different skill!
It’s like the difference between being actually able to tie your shoe-laces 
and being able to coach someone, over a text-message, about what the steps are 
.
All same, here. Loved your dream description!
Well, I feel as though I would have used the same pattern description if I’d dreamt of doing the same thing blindfolded, so to me it’s definitely not a visual experience. But describing a pool full of naked people, I wouldn’t have known this without having had some sense of seeing them (or touching, I suppose), but what I would be able to recall was that bare (!) fact: there were many naked people. I might be able to say that there were probably twice as many people under thirty than there were over it. But I couldn’t give you hair color, skin tones, approximate sizes, etc, unless something in the dream called attention to it.
I could tell you that they were Berol Mirado 174 #2 pencils, and I do recognize those by sight, even though they haven’t been made for decades. But the association for them would be more about how they write, and about my dwindling hoard of them from a college summer job at the Berol factory. While I recognize their particular shade of yellow body, pink eraser, silver writing, and gold-with-red-brown tip, I could not call that to mind, and can only give you that “gold-with-red-brown” description because there’s one in front of me. But it would be crystal-clear to me (metaphorically!) that they were Berol Mirado 174’s. If they were some other type, I could probably only tell you that they were not this favorite brand of mine.
Thanks! I probably should have made it clear that this was synthetic. I very rarely remember my dreams past noon. This is the types of dreams I often have; I’m quite sure my long-suffering wife would recognize the style of recounting, although this instance does not include more typical digressions and corrections.
It’s very odd at times to be married to her, who is at the opposite end of the spectrum from me, closer to hyperphantasiac. The dreams she remembers tend to the mundane. She is befuddled when my daughter and I recall our much more bizarre dreams. But when asked, “have you seen that red phone charger”, she can very quickly recall, “Yes, I saw it last Tuesday afternoon, on the shelf in the hall closet, mostly hidden behind the dustbuster.” She has a photorealistic mental image of the closet at that point. For me, it’s much more likely to be, “Oh, damn, I know I saw it last week sometime. But sorry, I can’t remember where.”
With @Scott_Sauyet here: alternating doorways would be a spatial-orientation-while-walking kind of awareness for me, not a visual impression.
So, when I say I could offer a walk-through tour of the apartment I lived in when I was four, even though I have no sense of the colors and visual “feel” of the place… I mean I know the practical layout intimately well.
You might be surprised that I disclaim access to a visualization, given that my orientation to all those architectural details was through sight. Sure, it came in through the eyes. But what my cognition (and memory) always pays most attention to is the spatial relations and how-to-move pathways (as well as things like where-there’s-a-faucet (though I can’t tell you the color of the handles) and whether-I-could-reach-the-window-sill (even though I can’t represent its height in any way that’s not relative-to-my-interaction).
…
You know there’s research on how people with “blindsight” (usually temporary, following injury) can absorb relevant cues with their eyes, but have no awareness of the visual “feel” of things? They tell neurologists they can’t see, but in fact they’ll flinch from “looming” stimulus, orient well to a variety of visual recognition cues, and will “guess right” far better than they should be able to, when given multiple choices about the image in front of them…
This shows that it’s possible to get information from sight — even in waking life! — without the experience of seeing being especially salient.
Granted, in real time, even I can tell you what colors and textures I’m seeing, if you ask! It’s just that such stuff is not usually the focal point of my needs and interest, so it’s no surprise that it’s not prioritized by memory.
There’s a real chicken-and-egg question looming in that!