Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation. This is Forest Stories.
I am the Poet in the Forest, a children's series that I pinned
out in the nineteen nineties. Now, none of it would be possible if
it wasn't for this forest right here in South Charlotte, North Carolina. I
talk about it so much that I thought maybe it's time that you get to
know what has inspired me for thirty years. Thanks for being a part of
the conversation. I wish you could hear it the rain as it falls through
the leaves and the pine needles of this beautiful forest. So many things are
in this forest, and that's what this is all about, sharing the little
things. Especially since I just met a fifth grader, I said, what's
you doing in the forest today? And he goes, I just want to
explore, I just want to see what this is all about. And I
said, that's exactly how I felt in nineteen ninety seven when we planted seventeen
hundred trees in this forest. And he looked in my eyes and it was
like, seventeen hundred trees. I can't even fathom that thought. One day
someone's going to walk through this forest and they're going to see the headstone in
the forest. It's been in two different places, deep into the forest,
backed by the slow moving stream headed to the lake, and now it's in
the front of the forest. And the only reason why it's there. It
kind of serves as a reminder of, hey, you were once here,
but where you need to go from this point forward is forward. That didn't
go steal something from a cemetery. Our radio station ninety five point one here
in Charlotte held a radio contest to find out how loyal you were to listening,
and so this person created a headstone and it said rip the old call
letters of the radio station because it was gone, because radio change is like
that. So instead of throwing this headstone away, I thought, I'm going
to keep this piece of history because maybe somebody in the future will see this,
do some research and realize this is a chunk of what used to be
a part of a lot of people's lives in the city because this radio station
was number one. The headstone in the forest kind of creepy, right it
is when you first see it, But when you know the story, all
of a sudden you warm up to the idea of, hey, wait a
second, although this city is known for forgetting its history, right, here
is a piece of that history that the city did not take away. The
radio station headstone. Well, I can tell you right now it's still on
the air, but it's gone through so many transitions that it's like nobody really
remembers this one part in history, and yet it's preserved in this forest.
It's not a junkyard. It's just something when you're walking along and you see
something. In fact, it kind of reminds me of a forest that's in
Matthews, North Carolina. People take painted rocks to that forest and they give
it back to the earth. It's fun to walk on that path to look
at all the different colors and the different energy levels that people have put into
that forest. It catches your eye and then it ignites your imagination. That's
kind of what this does too, the headstone from a radio station in a
forest. Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation.