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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

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

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of the conversation. Welcome back to
the forest. Oh, the turtles.

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The turtles in this forest make me
feel like a kid. Every single day

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we were taking a stroll through the
forest, Jesse and I and my thoughts

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were heavy on this fall day,
and right there in front of us was

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this box turtle. I often wonder
if it's the same box turtle spirit that

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joined me inside my spirit circle and
my sacred space inside this forest when I

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would go out and do my studies
with Native American spirituality. No matter what

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day it was, a turtle always
joined me inside the sacred circle. I

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laughed every day because it made me
feel like a child. It was as

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if I was being transformed back to
a time where the innocence of something like

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a turtle had to feed its way
into my mind, body, and soul.

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But the turtles in this forest some
can be very large. We came

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across one that must have been two
feet across and it was in the road.

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How are we going to move this
turtle of such great size back into

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the forest, knowing that its mouth
could devour part of our arm. We

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sat there with patience, our blinking
lights on other travelers through the forest on

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the roadway. They would look at
us. They would think we were strange.

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Who were these people trying to save
a turtle that was two feet wide.

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We had to come up with a
plan how to move the animal,

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because if you've been with turtles before, especially one in a forest, they're

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not in the mood to move.
They just want to enjoy the place at

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which they lay. How we handled
it was I was able to go back

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and rub the backside of the shell
to let him know that we were aware

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of him being in our presence,
and that he needed to know that we

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were there to save him so that
a car would not come by and run

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him over. After all, he
had escaped the forest and he was on

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his way searching for something. I've
been with turtle experts. They tell me

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all the time that you know,
maybe they're not always searching for water,

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they're searching for just a place,
a place to call their own. And

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when you've got as many lakes as
we do inside this forest, you're going

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to have turtle movement. With all
the turtles stories that I have read,

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the thing that I've always learned is
that it teaches you to be mobile with

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your own living house, to be
ready to make changes and not put yourself

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in a position where you're going to
be challenged by the changes. A turtle

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never looks stressed out. They're always
there in this forest. Hey, thanks

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for being a part of the conversation.