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. Oh, the turtles.
The turtles in this forest make me feel like a kid. Every single day
we were taking a stroll through the forest, Jesse and I and my thoughts
were heavy on this fall day, and right there in front of us was
this box turtle. I often wonder if it's the same box turtle spirit that
joined me inside my spirit circle and my sacred space inside this forest when I
would go out and do my studies with Native American spirituality. No matter what
day it was, a turtle always joined me inside the sacred circle. I
laughed every day because it made me feel like a child. It was as
if I was being transformed back to a time where the innocence of something like
a turtle had to feed its way into my mind, body, and soul.
But the turtles in this forest some can be very large. We came
across one that must have been two feet across and it was in the road.
How are we going to move this turtle of such great size back into
the forest, knowing that its mouth could devour part of our arm. We
sat there with patience, our blinking lights on other travelers through the forest on
the roadway. They would look at us. They would think we were strange.
Who were these people trying to save a turtle that was two feet wide.
We had to come up with a plan how to move the animal,
because if you've been with turtles before, especially one in a forest, they're
not in the mood to move. They just want to enjoy the place at
which they lay. How we handled it was I was able to go back
and rub the backside of the shell to let him know that we were aware
of him being in our presence, and that he needed to know that we
were there to save him so that a car would not come by and run
him over. After all, he had escaped the forest and he was on
his way searching for something. I've been with turtle experts. They tell me
all the time that you know, maybe they're not always searching for water,
they're searching for just a place, a place to call their own. And
when you've got as many lakes as we do inside this forest, you're going
to have turtle movement. With all the turtles stories that I have read,
the thing that I've always learned is that it teaches you to be mobile with
your own living house, to be ready to make changes and not put yourself
in a position where you're going to be challenged by the changes. A turtle
never looks stressed out. They're always there in this forest. Hey, thanks
for being a part of the conversation.