I was back home in Sandy Ridge a few weeks ago doing what I always do when I get the chance.

Not sightseeing.

Not vacationing.

Just kicking dirt.

That’s what Lou calls it.

“Kicking dirt.”

It means wandering around the place, checking on things, doing little jobs that don’t really need doing, and generally spending time where you belong.

I spent part of the morning blowing leaves out of the gutters, watering some recently planted evergreens, and blowing off the back deck.

I enjoy every minute of it.

Some of my favorite moments happen when I’m outside with no particular agenda at all.

These days people call it “forest bathing.”

Around Sandy Ridge, we mostly call it being in the yard.

Either way, it works.

Our place is surrounded by trees. Tall oaks, poplars, maples, and pines that have been standing there longer than most of us. When the wind moves through them, it sounds about the same as it did when I was a boy.

While I was making my rounds, my sister Sandra asked if I’d heard they were building a data center over in Madison.

I hadn’t.

“What?” I said.

Later that evening I looked it up.

Sure enough.

Ninety-four acres.

A former textile property.

Close to the Piedmont Triad.

Plenty of power. Plenty of fiber.

All the ingredients needed for one of these massive facilities.

The more I read, the more I thought, of course they are.

A hundred years ago this part of North Carolina was tobacco country.

Then textiles.

Then manufacturing.

Now data.

The world keeps changing jobs, but it never stops looking for land.

Still, it hit me a little funny.

Maybe because I was standing in a yard surrounded by trees while reading about buildings full of computers just a few miles away.

It felt like the future was easing itself into the neighborhood.

Not barging in.

Just quietly moving closer.

Later that day Mom asked me what all this artificial intelligence stuff was about.

Not for the first time.

Mom doesn’t remember everything like she once did.

Then again, neither do I.

But she and Dad stay remarkably informed. They watch the news, keep up with current events, and Mom can work her Android phone a whole lot better than most people her age thanks to granddaughter Tiffany.

So I started again.

I told her to think of A.I. as a very eager student that’s read millions of books and looked at millions of photographs.

“It doesn’t think exactly like we do,” I said. “But it’s very good at recognizing patterns.”

Then she asked if I used it.

Every day, I told her.

I use it for estimates, proposals, construction questions, research, and helping me think through problems.

Then she asked the question everybody eventually asks.

“Do you think it will take over one day?”

My first answer came quickly.

“Probably not in my lifetime.”

But later, standing in Sandy Ridge and thinking about that new data center in Madison, I wasn’t quite so sure.

About all those servers.

About all that computing power.

About how quickly the world seems to be changing.

When I was growing up in Sandy Ridge, long-distance telephone calls were expensive enough that folks thought before making them.

Today, a machine sitting somewhere in a building can answer questions in seconds that might have taken me days to research thirty years ago.

That’s a pretty remarkable leap for one lifetime.

The older I get, the more I realize every generation thinks they’ve reached a point where things will finally settle down.

Then they don’t.

The world just keeps changing.

Textile mills become data centers.

Fields become subdivisions.

Kids become grandparents.

And somehow the trees keep growing through all of it.

I don’t know exactly where artificial intelligence is taking us.

I don’t know what Madison will look like twenty years from now.

And I don’t know what question Mom will ask me the next time I’m home.

But I do know this.

Maybe that’s one reason I keep coming back to Sandy Ridge to kick dirt.

The world changes fast.

Sandy Ridge changes slower.

And sometimes, standing under a few old trees with a leaf blower in your hand is about the right speed for a man trying to keep up with both.

As Best As I Remember It.