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. I just wrapped up a
lengthy walk through all of the trees with its multiple colors of fall. I
take a transition walk because things from this forest move through me. I've allowed
that to be my peace filled walk, my intention to allow this forest in
South Charlotte, North Carolina to have a voice. In fact, while on
this transition walk, it occurred to me as the leaves were falling from the
trees onto the ground, I reminded myself that so many of us think of
that as being a negative, when in fact it's not a negative. Especially
when space X today sent up their second biggest rocket of all time, and
although it did get off its path and they had to destroy it, nobody
at SpaceX saw that as a failure. They said that, hey, look
we're going to take the data and we're going to create a better ship.
But that's what I love about this force is that as you're walking through it,
allowing the rays of the sun to speak directly into your mind, body,
and soul, you receive things such as looking at your life as being
a failure, look at it as being collecting information to make yourself stronger and
better than before. Upon my arrival home, I'm sitting on the porch overlooking
the front part of the forest. This is the very area that for nearly
three years, my wife and I sat out here almost every single day,
sharing breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and playing endless games on Zoom with
people around the world. The time period I'm talking about is during the COVID
nineteen lockdown. This was our play of escape. We couldn't run about the
world, but in this forest, the world spoke to us. So sitting
at this table after a transition walk, I'm reminded of those moments where my
wife and I saw the world falling apart, but we never reacted in a
way that it was falling apart. We created an atmosphere of peace, and
it's due one hundred percent to this beautiful forest. Sitting at this table is
just as important as any other story on forest stories, and the reason why
is because we allow these trees to have a voice. In fact, I
spoke about that in my daily writing today. Do trees come with words?
I searched high and low for an answer on that on Google, couldn't find
anything. But instead of looking at myself as being a failure falling from the
tree to the ground below, I took a different kind of growth and that
was the words that I placed on a page came from a g tree.
So when I said that words come from trees, I feel witnessed to it
on the page before me. It all grows from this beautiful forest. Hey,
thanks for being a part of the conversation.