The dream paid a visit again last night. It’s the second time in the past month.

Why it’s suddenly recurring on a regular basis, I don’t know.

There were years where it stayed away, safely salted in the repository of lost dreams, unrealized daydreams, and banished nightmares.

It’s a dream of a real occurrence. But the occurrence is pushing 25 years of age.

I could pinpoint the exact date by hauling out my journals and doing a manual search of my 3-by-5 diary cards. But the exact date isn’t what’s important. It’s what the dream involves that’s significant.

What it involves is a Saturday morning 18-mile run along a course strewn with rubble from an overnight storm. From above, it would look like one of those aerial views a governor gets in the wake of a hurricane or tornado in hopes of FEMA moving in to grant low-interest loans to the victims.

At the time of the incident, I was living in Palo Alto, California, and working at Runner’s World in nearby Mountain View. Palo Alto was a wonderful place for a runner to live in those bygone days of 60- and 70-mile training weeks. The city prided itself on its extensive bicycle routes, its secluded little neighborhoods, and its eccentric residents, most of them thrown up from a deep well of eccentrics at nearby Stanford University.

I would like to say that in those days I was not a slave to a training schedule, but that would be bald deception. If my schedule called for an 18-miler and huge steep-sided chasms were opening in the earth because the end of the world was at hand, distress at the end of civilization as we knew it would have to wait until those scheduled 18 miles were behind me. Then I could gaze down into the erupting lava from hell while contemplating the end of days.

On the particular morning of this recurring dream, all hell—a wet, windy hell, at least—had broken loose the night before.

A rainstorm had rolled in from the coast. It was supercharged by extremely high winds that made the windows rattle and the lights flicker out, then on, then out again. Tree branches scraped the side of the house like cats begging to be let in.

In one of those perversions of personality quirks, as long as I have a good blanket to pull up around my neck, a raging storm or the sound of railroad whistles—I grew up in a town with not one but two rail lines going through it—lulls me to sleep like a contented baby.

The occasional drift into consciousness during the night was brief because the sounds of the storm flexing its awesome power put me right back to sleep.

So it was the next morning that I woke early and refreshed—and more than ready for my 18-mile long run.

The worst of the storm had blown through, although there was still a stiff breeze and occasional sheets of rain skittering through town. From the balcony of our third-floor apartment, I looked down at something that resembled the aftermath of a hurricane.

The streets were littered with debris.

Tree branches were down, leaves were everywhere, and the occasional garbage can had been rolled like a barrel of beer at a German picnic.

And there was not a person or animal about.

I had the world to myself. A decidedly messy world, to be sure, but one filled with possibilities.

I pulled on a thin, plastic Frank Shorter brand windbreaker and jogged over to Middlefield Road, warming up, cutting a zigzag path through the rubble.

The breeze stirred the tree branches, as though teasing them to guess which ones would be brought down next if the breeze decided to increase in volume. There was a smell of new wood from where broken branches protruded like compound fractures into the street.

When I hit Middlefield Road, I turned south. The traffic light at the intersection was dead, as were all the lights as far as I could see down Middlefield. The generous bike lanes were littered with leaves and branches, and the street was deserted so I could run down the middle of it if I wanted.

Although I usually run against traffic in order to see oncoming menaces, on Middlefield I was in the habit of running in the right-side bike lane because it was wide and safe and the descending right-side crown served to even out stress usually applied to the left side.

With nothing moving but the tree branches and me, I knitted my way, moving out into the middle of the road when a tree branch blocked the bike path.

As I warmed up, I zipped open the windbreaker and let it flap. The breeze was coming from the right, from the direction of the ocean, and the occasional squall of drizzle was short lived and refreshing.

My stride increased imperceptibly, and I was moving smoothly, clocking 6:25s and 6:30s with little effort. I could see down the street for blocks, so I could begin to make adjustments to my route well before I had to take steps to avoid more fallen branches or the occasional trash can. At one point, I slid out into the middle of the road to avoid not one but two patio chairs painted a garish pink the color of those flamingo yard ornaments in Florida.

Several parked Volvos were wearing sizable tree branches on their roofs. Their owners had convinced themselves that Volvos are indestructible, but today they would find that the branch from their 75-year-old live oak was more than a match.

By the time I reached my southern terminus, where Middlefield intersects with Central Expressway, I encountered the beginning of activity. A blue-haired woman bent over on her sidewalk, brushing up fallen leaves using a whiskbroom. A kid of about 10 struggled futilely to drag a branch as thick as he was from the front yard. A city maintenance truck rumbled by, a yellow light atop the cab flashing.

None of the few human beings slowly shuffling about even noticed me. I was like a ghost, wafting through their neighborhood.

Central Expressway, because it was wider than Middlefield Road and had fewer overhanging trees, was easier to negotiate. I played fartlek every few blocks, picking up the pace a mite between telephone poles. It felt good, as fresh as the rain-washed air.

BLOWING OUT THE CARBON

Along Central, an occasional car now moved, the driver steering around fallen branches like a DMV driver-testing course. Most of the cars had their headlights on; it was gray and overcast and uncertain.

I stayed on Central until it dumped me into the downtown area, onto University Avenue, where I turned right and headed east. There was a lot more activity along the avenue as store owners tried to get ready for Saturday morning business. A number of them swept up leaves from in front of their

John Steinbeck was the first novelist I ever read without a school assignment hanging over me. He remains my favorite.

Great novelists speak truths to the reader through their fiction. In Sweet Thursday, Steinbeck’s little-known sequel to Cannery Row, he writes, “Looking back, you can usually find the moment of the birth of a new era, whereas when it happened it was one day hooked on the tail of another.”

There were signs then of times changing, he says. “But you never notice such things until later.”

My introduction to Steinbeck came in spring 1963. I could tell you exactly when and where this reading came, but I won’t.

Instead I’ll tell what happened soon afterward. That same summer I traveled from Iowa to California, to the land that Steinbeck had once walked.

My purpose wasn’t to follow his paths but to polish my track-racing skills. Northern California was one of the few places you could do that in summertime, the off-season back then.

Life had other plans for me. One was the unplanned discovery of road races, which would lead to marathons and beyond. The other surprise was a bottom-of-the-staff job at Track & Field News, which would lead to all the jobs I’ve ever held.

My careers, both running and writing, seemed to have peaked early. Before I was 30, my important PRs all had become permanent. I had edited my biggest-circulation magazine and written the books that sold best.

By age 40, I had gone three years since my last marathon and looked unlikely to start again. I had lost a job when Nike shut down its magazine called Running, my books weren’t selling, my marriage was ending.

As Steinbeck says, you can’t see a golden age coming. You can’t know what you had until it’s gone.

My golden age was gone, apparently for good. I couldn’t have known how high a peak I had climbed until I looked up at it from the valley on the other side.

Everyone who has lived long enough can recognize a personal golden age. This old sport had one too. It ended more than 20 years ago, at least for American marathoners as serious competitors en masse.

The first issue of Track & Field News that I worked on told of Buddy Edelen setting a world marathon record. This began the golden years that lasted through the Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers years, then ended with Alberto Salazar’s in the early 1980s.

The golden age for U.S. women started later and lasted a little longer. I date it from their first official Boston in 1972, won by Nina Kuscsik, through