It is late in the day, the wind is still, the grass is green and there are seven lazy clouds in the sky. There are mosquitoes and flies that bite, bugs that crawl and frogs, too. He is a man of an age that is not important from a time that was very important, and there but a few things important to him now — family, his grandkids, reading by the light of the same lamp he read from as a boy. And of course, fishing is important, too.

“Epic.” It is the word the sweaty, lip-stained, shirt-stained, knee-skinned, dirty-fingered, blue-eyed, shoelaces untied, six-year-old youngest son of mine choose to describe how we spent the day on the water.

It seems that even within the woven fabrics of an early morning, the sun always lurks.

North Carolina’s first ACC Baseball Tournament championship since 2007 certainly is one for the books.

I see artwork and stare. My eyes follow the lines, and I study the colors. My mind processes the shapes, curves, jagged edges, the shabby and the abstract.

They say we never forget our first. In this sea of life, there will be buoys of a first lost tooth, first hit in baseball, first vehicle, first kiss and the first time you camped beneath the stars.

It is not as much a walk as it is a shuffle, and this is how he moves down the bank. He is not as old as the trees around him, and he doesn’t hear the birds above him as he once did.

It used to be that camouflage was something worn to be hidden. The concept is simple enough, and ever since man learned of the need to hide to hunt, he has used the concept of blending in with colors.

If I could describe the witnessing of darkness becoming light, it would be a careful unwrapping of a surprise gift.

He sits at the table and he opens the album and he is soon lost in remnants of the past. ... She hums a hymn while she moves and she sees that he is absorbing each picture, slowly. ... Inside these white pages where a film of plastic separates yellowing images from the touch of curious fingers, generations of time spent outdoors tells a story.

I did not need a calendar to remind me that spring began last week. There was no need to touch the ends of the branches while I ran. I did not need to taste the warmth of air from the south whence warm winds blow. To know spring had arrived, I listened.

"Waaaaa waaaa waaa waaaa waaaa waaaaaa wa waa waaaaaa.” If you understood this, then you know Charlie Brown. More importantly, if you understood the unmistakable voice of the never-seen teacher, then you know, or at the least appreciate, Charles Schulz.

It wasn’t normal for young men to wear earrings in both ears 32 years ago when Sherry Norris won her first state basketball title, but it seems like that’s all you see nowadays. Young ladies weren’t handling the basketball the way Harding University High School’s point guard dribbled it Saturday at N.C. State’s Reynolds Coliseum, either.

That day, when he read the classified ads, he felt compelled to phone. At the other end was an elderly woman and he asked, “Ma’am are you sure?” It was a 1979 model Chevrolet and she said her husband had bought the truck, new.

Two days in a row, the opposing head coach commented about the physical nature of their game against Duke in the ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament.