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Hey, thanks for being a part
of the conversation. This is Forest Stories.

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I am the Poet in the Forest, a children's series that I pinned

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out in the nineteen nineties. Now, none of it would be possible if

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it wasn't for this forest right here
in South Charlotte, North Carolina. I

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talk about it so much that I
thought maybe it's time that you get to

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know what has inspired me for thirty
years. Thanks for being a part of

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the conversation. I wish you could
hear it the rain as it falls through

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the leaves and the pine needles of
this beautiful forest. So many things are

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in this forest, and that's what
this is all about, sharing the little

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things. Especially since I just met
a fifth grader, I said, what's

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you doing in the forest today?
And he goes, I just want to

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explore, I just want to see
what this is all about. And I

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said, that's exactly how I felt
in nineteen ninety seven when we planted seventeen

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hundred trees in this forest. And
he looked in my eyes and it was

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like, seventeen hundred trees. I
can't even fathom that thought. One day

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someone's going to walk through this forest
and they're going to see the headstone in

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the forest. It's been in two
different places, deep into the forest,

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backed by the slow moving stream headed
to the lake, and now it's in

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the front of the forest. And
the only reason why it's there. It

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kind of serves as a reminder of, hey, you were once here,

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but where you need to go from
this point forward is forward. That didn't

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go steal something from a cemetery.
Our radio station ninety five point one here

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in Charlotte held a radio contest to
find out how loyal you were to listening,

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and so this person created a headstone
and it said rip the old call

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letters of the radio station because it
was gone, because radio change is like

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that. So instead of throwing this
headstone away, I thought, I'm going

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to keep this piece of history because
maybe somebody in the future will see this,

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do some research and realize this is
a chunk of what used to be

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a part of a lot of people's
lives in the city because this radio station

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was number one. The headstone in
the forest kind of creepy, right it

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is when you first see it,
But when you know the story, all

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of a sudden you warm up to
the idea of, hey, wait a

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second, although this city is known
for forgetting its history, right, here

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is a piece of that history that
the city did not take away. The

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radio station headstone. Well, I
can tell you right now it's still on

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the air, but it's gone through
so many transitions that it's like nobody really

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remembers this one part in history,
and yet it's preserved in this forest.

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It's not a junkyard. It's just
something when you're walking along and you see

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something. In fact, it kind
of reminds me of a forest that's in

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Matthews, North Carolina. People take
painted rocks to that forest and they give

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it back to the earth. It's
fun to walk on that path to look

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at all the different colors and the
different energy levels that people have put into

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that forest. It catches your eye
and then it ignites your imagination. That's

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kind of what this does too,
the headstone from a radio station in a

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forest. Hey, thanks for being
a part of the conversation.