  The long-distance structure of the interacting nucleon receives important
contributions from its couplings to light hadronic degrees of freedom -- a
light meson cloud -- while an analogous nonperturbative mechanism is expected
to generate an intrinsic charm (IC) component to the proton wavefunction. We
investigate both possibilities, keeping for the former a special eye to
improving the theoretical understanding of the pion-nucleon vertex in light of
proposed measurements. Regarding the latter possibility of IC, we highlight
recent results obtained by a global QCD analysis of the light-front model
proposed in Hobbs et al. (Phys Rev D 89:074008, 2014).
