Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation. This is for stories.
I'm 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. July eleventh, nineteen ninety three.
This place that I stand, the meadow here in the forest, really close
to the slow paced stream moving toward the lake. This is where we shared
our wedding vows, where we didn't promise anything, we guaranteed it. My
best man was Chris Beck, my wife's maid of honor, our daughter Jenny,
and we invited about forty or fifty people. Most of them were radio
people because I was doing industrial radio at the time, and the rest were
family and friends, friends that had traveled several miles, some from California.
But in this place where I presently stand, the wedding area, I remember
Lee sharing her personally written vows, and it was so funny because it was
very difficult for her to even get into those vows. That her heart was
touched by the moment of so much love from anything and everything that was around
us. It was and we laugh about it even today. Thirty two years
later. We had two very special visitors, birds my cockatails. They were
part of the wedding as well, and they sat next to a man made
little pond that we'd created because I was trying to do whatever I could to
stop the erosion, and I thought, oh, the rain water we'll run
into here. Well, you know what, that's my inexperienced talking. But
on that wedding day, you know, we all have inexperience when it comes
to how are these vows really going to play out? But we didn't question
them. We embraced them. And as I stand on this place where we
said I do guarantee you over and over again, I turned to look to
see how the land has changed so much, especially from the past heavy rain
that we had with all the different flooding. The pond is no longer there,
the creek is much different, it's moving in a different direction. There
is no green grass on this cold day because the day that we got married
July eleventh, nineteen ninety three. It was one hundred and two degrees.
Now, the one thing that I wanted most to happen that day was for
my parents to hear the wedding. But in nineteen ninety three, cell phones
they weren't an everyday thing. They weren't part of our lives. They were
there, but they just weren't part of our lives. So my mother and
father celebrated their anniversary on the same exact day, on the day that we
took our first step into a brand new beginning. But this is it a
very very sacred place, in this meadow, in this forest. Hey,
thanks for being a part of the conversation.