Mark Twain once said, “It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

Here in the heart of the Rockies this year, March 1st is a bit early for spring fever. It’s still colder than a brass toilet seat in the Yukon. But the signs are there. The robins and mourning doves have returned. We get the occasional sunny warm-up day, where it starts at fifteen degrees Fahrenheit and warms up enough by late afternoon to open the windows for a little fresh air. Often to be followed, of course, by yet another snowstorm.

This time of year my heart definitely aches for something. Unlike Twain, though. I know exactly what it is. It’s green. It’s warm. It’s thawed. It’s being able to walk out the door without an arsenal of warm socks, boots, scarves, hats, gloves, coats. Being able to climb into the car and drive away without first scraping ice from the windows.

All that want, that yearning, tends to drive us all crazy, doesn’t it? That’s why we call it spring fever.

I was about six years old when I contracted scarlet fever as a child. I remember having crazy dreams. In one, my brother came home from work and walked down the hallway to my room. All I could see were his big work boots, stomping down the hallway, getting bigger and bigger, until one huge cartoonish boot filled the doorway. I remembering being both fascinated and terrified, out of my head with the fever and the sickness.

That’s the kind of crazy spring sometimes brings with it, and the kind of crazy we have for you this month. Cartoonish, fascinating, terrifying.

As always, we hope you are deer-in-the-headlights glued to your computer screen from first word to last.