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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 Arlotte, 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. The sense of death is in

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this force today. The scent of
death is something you'll never forget. The

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last time the scent was this strong, someone on the other side of the

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forest had taken an arrow and driven
it through the neck of a buck,

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which is illegal. You can't do
that. This isn't hunting grounds. But

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I'm reminded today of that, and
I'm going to have to hit these trails

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today to find out where is this
scent of death coming from. People tend

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to do that. They take advantage
of all things natural inside this forest.

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They have for all the years I've
been here, and it really did take

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me years to understand. You know
what, it doesn't all belong to me,

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just my little dot, my little
dot on the map is what I

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have control of. What they're doing
on the other side of the forest really

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isn't for me to say. But
there's a scent of death inside the forest

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today. It's strong, and if
you've ever been around it, you know

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that you never forget it because once
it gets inside your nostrils, it travels

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through your soul, goes through your
veins, and then all of a sudden,

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your body reacts and it wants to
know where is the scent of death

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in this forest? Coming from what
has happened that I don't know about.

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And being in this forest right now, I'm not seeing any black vultures in

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the sky, so I don't know
where it would be. Because I utilize

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the energy of the vultures to find
things such as that. That's how I

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found the deer. But what is
it? The scent of death and the

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force today? Hey, thanks for
being a part of the conversation.