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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. Welcome back to the
forest. A couple of chapters ago,

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we spoke of the massive rainstorm that
consumed this little section of the world and

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the damage that the one time slow
paced stream moving to the lake had turned

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into a violent rage. I'm at
the bridge right now, the very bridge

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where I've sat very peacefully with many
of my rescues, and they've transitioned into

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a different part of their life,
and I'm walking across it now seen still

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the remnants of what this storm brought. One of the things that's really had

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my attention over the last couple of
weeks was a section of the forest that

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basically called out to me, this
was going to be my sacred place to

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continue my studies with native American spirituality
as well as get one on one with

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the universe and that storm, that
one little area that I used to pray

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and meditate. I would have my
acoustick, my prayer stick, my beads,

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and those places where I would go
to catch all of the beauty.

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The universe is so willing to share. This section of the forest has been

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wiped out. The stream no longer
goes in the same area that it used

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to. It's meandered in a different
direction, and it's totally consumed. This

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area where I would sit with turtles, I really would. And there were

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a couple of times where the rabbits
were just a few feet away and the

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deer would just stand there just chewing
on whatever they were eating, and they

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would just say, Wow, there's
that guy. There. He is.

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He's over there in that little circle
that he made where he opened up the

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gate in the north, the south, the east, in the west,

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and then he knelt and he prayed. Are he meditated, He connected with

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a loving universe. And so to
see this area no longer present, that's

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the very reason why I wanted to
create for stories, because I feel it

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in my heart that everything that we've
experienced inside these moments, they're going to

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be washed away, just like the
Sacred Circle. Hey, thanks for being

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a part of the conversation.