Silver gilded the far horizon – gray gold glinting through the mist of a shabby dawn. I saw it this morning as I skied out of the night in a woods unknown to me before yesterday. Something woke me out of a dead sleep to go back there. The last rags of winter melting away? An urgent passion half formed in dreams that I wanted to chase? Or just a need to escape? Time ticks loudly in a large house. Sometimes you have to smash the clocks to smash the locks of life’s shackles.

Escaping routines is highly recommended for summoning back phantoms and fantasies into which you once breathed life. I see them in black and white. My memories are all film noirs. Dunno why. Most of them blazed with color when they premiered. But I love feeling them surround me in the vast privacy of a winter woods at night. Especially THIS month…

“In like a lion, out like a lamb!” So they say about Marches, but the 31 days of mine are more like a lion and a lion and another lion and – oh, look, there’s another lion! Lionesses actually. Wild, magical month! Certain March dates throb on my calendar each year like scarlet beacons between the shores of destiny and the shoals of fate. There’s no telling where the current will take me. Kismet run amok, then run aground! And the hand of something beyond probability is unmistakable in my Marches. Once I thought figuring out what it meant was important. It’s not important. The Universe defies understanding.

Everyone needs a magic month. Maybe yours happens when you get a little distance from the clamor in your life. Or when the vagabond winds of spring touch your face and you suddenly feel your heart beating like you’re a teen again. Find your sensory cues. Reconnect. Else your dreams are wasted.

And don’t forget the soundtrack. You know, those electrifying songs that steal out of the past and cut to the quick? Or they can be contemporary. My jury’s out on that one as to whether they enhance reality or block it. Retro soundtracks for going back in time are sacred on account of the memories they evoke are fixed like stars in the firmament. But these dudes that spend their waking hours with their brains half inside their earplugs miss too much of whatever’s happening in the moment. You need to feed your “now” with all your senses plus your thoughts if you want to fully savor anything worth making a future memory. Did I say that right?

Saw an Olympic skier jam his cell phone into his helmet just before he took his shot in the men’s slalom last month. Now, maybe he was trying to keep tabs with his stockbroker, but I’ll lay odds he was hoping a fav musical download would stream into his blood and translate into a gold medal. Alas! On the third turn he straddled both sides of one of those red whippy things that mark the course and wound up making snow angels against a fence. Probably listening to Snow Patrol.

I never got to the Olympics in my Speedo, but I remember swimming time trials with the pool speakers wailing Little Richard T-sax riffs because I was convinced it would set my blood on fire. Not only did I fail to “Rip It Up,” but – “Good Golly, Miss Molly” – I think I drowned “Long Tall Sully” – er, “Sally.” The enhanced performance was pure illusion. Maybe life is like that. Saturating your emotions is a download, actually living is an upload. When you pre-empt the immediate present with a soundtrack you become a passive puppet. Make the memory first, then cue the background music to bring it back in moments when you want to suspend the present and revisit your dreams.

That said, I’m delighted to tell you that the 30-year anniversary print edition of my debut novel THE PHASES OF HARRY MOON now exists as both a memory and a present tense reality. The 1988 original garnered a Pulitzer Prize nomination and became a cult classic. Which is why Crossroad Press has brought it back in a handsome trade edition (also an e-book release) available on all platforms: https://crossroadpress.com/product/the-phases-of-harry-moon/  Or read a free sample on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1946025674

This month’s photos include a visit from two of my dearest friends Ralph and Cathy Garcia from Michigan! Ralph and I used to run/bike/ski together. Our running buddies were a colorful lot: Detroit Lions Hall of Famers Joe Schmidt and Mike Lucci, plus world-renown cardiologist Joe Arends and St. Louis (Arizona) Cardinal coach Tony Versaci. The six of us spent many magical hours running the fabulous 320-acre grounds of storied Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, MI. Wish I could share a zillion or so stories from those adventures. A royal time!

Photos below: #1-2 Cathy and Ralph at PF Chang’s in Maple Grove; #3 the aftermath of storm-skiing at Elm Creek; #4 “Kissing Tree Number 1” (I’d explain, but then I’d hafta kill ya); #5 back door to the back trails of Elm Creek; #6 me upon learning that they started the Olympics without me – again; #7 “Kissing Tree Number 2” (ran out of numbers but not trees soon after that); #8-10 trees, trees, trees; #11 Ralph and Cathy at Sullivan Acres; #12 los tres caballeros!

We all set out to do stuff in life…and then we forget. Your magic month is a tether to the perfect you living the perfect life you once imagined.