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. Welcome back to the forest. A couple of chapters ago,
we spoke of the massive rainstorm that consumed this little section of the world and
the damage that the one time slow paced stream moving to the lake had turned
into a violent rage. I'm at the bridge right now, the very bridge
where I've sat very peacefully with many of my rescues, and they've transitioned into
a different part of their life, and I'm walking across it now seen still
the remnants of what this storm brought. One of the things that's really had
my attention over the last couple of weeks was a section of the forest that
basically called out to me, this was going to be my sacred place to
continue my studies with native American spirituality as well as get one on one with
the universe and that storm, that one little area that I used to pray
and meditate. I would have my acoustick, my prayer stick, my beads,
and those places where I would go to catch all of the beauty.
The universe is so willing to share. This section of the forest has been
wiped out. The stream no longer goes in the same area that it used
to. It's meandered in a different direction, and it's totally consumed. This
area where I would sit with turtles, I really would. And there were
a couple of times where the rabbits were just a few feet away and the
deer would just stand there just chewing on whatever they were eating, and they
would just say, Wow, there's that guy. There. He is.
He's over there in that little circle that he made where he opened up the
gate in the north, the south, the east, in the west,
and then he knelt and he prayed. Are he meditated, He connected with
a loving universe. And so to see this area no longer present, that's
the very reason why I wanted to create for stories, because I feel it
in my heart that everything that we've experienced inside these moments, they're going to
be washed away, just like the Sacred Circle. Hey, thanks for being
a part of the conversation.