Yesterday it was 78 degrees with powdery blue skies. We walked on the Cottonwood Trail and saw the bloodroot's first bloom on our favorite March hillside. As an ephemeral early season wildflower, the bloodroot isn't really flashy. It's low to the ground. One white flower with a little yellow center accompanies the single, odd-shaped green leaf.  They live in colonies but you can almost lose their shy display among the leaf litter.

Lately I've been driving around looking at the Wal-Marts and Home Depots of the outer fringes of Spartanburg suburbia as crumbling empty vestiges of bloated corporate egos and outmoded ideas about living.

Since I returned from my epic 11-day "paddle to the sea" last week the question most friends have asked is, "Did you make it all the way?"

Yes, I did make it, but after I'd finished we loaded the canoe and it only took five hours to get back home. Though I was very happy to see my wife, my dry house, my dog, there was something sad about reentering the current of the modern world, and that little bit of sadness is one of the emotions I have not been able to shake.

I've had a dozen dogs in my life, many of them memorable for one reason or another.

One of my early traumas concerns our family dog. When I was little more than an infant we had a daschund named Paula who was "in heat" and we had her in the house. A pack of male dogs had gathered around the back door, and I leaned against it and fell out among them. One bit me on the upper lip, so I had to get rabies shots around my navel for a month.