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Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation. This

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is Forest Stories. I am the Poet in the Forest,

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a children's series that I pinned out in the nineteen nineties. Now,

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none of it would be possible if it wasn't for

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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

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time that you get to know what has inspired me

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for thirty years. Thanks for being a part of the conversation.

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Welcome back to the forest. Kind of an odd story

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this time around. As I walk through this winter day

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inside this tiny little collection of trees in South Charlotte,

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North Carolina, Jazzy and I have been taking these walks

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since twenty eighteen. That's when she came into my life.

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My baby Jazzy, a pointer, loves to eat bird seed.

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A lot on bird seed. You get inside those cages

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of Ernie and the doves, and she will do whatever

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she can to eat the bird seeds. So, while on

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this walk today through this forest, as we await this

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season's first storm or snowstorm, which should be arriving by

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four or five o'clock this afternoon, I look down at

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the ground. At first I thought Okay, I'm going to

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be looking at this ground tomorrow, probably with white on

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it all over the place the first time in three years.

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And then it occurred to me, my baby Jazzy, the pointer,

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all the bird seed that she eats, well, it's got

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to come out right. How many of these plants on

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this trail are here because of her, because she just

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basically replanted the seeds. Have you thought about that on

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your own personal walk and journey when you take your

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dog your cat outside into the beautiful arena of the universe,

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how much of that out there is because your animal

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was called to share the seeds. Just something to think about.

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Thanks for being a part of this conversation.