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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. A big change is probably

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coming to this forest. I've been a part of it

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for thirty two years. It's a cozy, little cuddly place,

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a dot on the map that's really Nobody knows it

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exists unless you take the time to create a discovery.

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But it's scheduled to change, or at least for the moment,

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because there are rezoning meetings that are taking place, and

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the community of this forest is doing all they can

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to get petitions signed to protect this force. They want

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to build a new community. It's where the community will

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be that has my attention. Here in the South, we

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are blessed to have these things called flat land swamps,

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not your normal swamps that you see creatures in and movies,

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but a flat land swamp a place where water gathers

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from rainstorms. It just doesn't sink into the ground as

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quickly as you would think. But there are creatures that

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live inside these land swamps. And the thing about it is, though,

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is that the whole entire environment around this forest, this

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tiny little cuddly forest in the middle of nowhere that

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people don't know about, things are going to change, not

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only for the human being but the wildlife. The petitions

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are out to help protect them, the deer, the hawk,

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the owls, because once they get into this flat land

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area and they start ripping down the trees, that affects

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everything everything, which is one of the reasons why back

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in nineteen ninety seven I planted seventeen hundred trees in

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my section of the forest. There was so much human

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selfishness going on that they removed all of these trees,

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which put other animals in other areas. So it became

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my goal to create a refuge, a place where they

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could go to rest. And this land swamp, which they're

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going to put a bridge over it into this community,

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which I have nothing against, but they're not thinking about

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the animals it's the human ego. I understand it. We

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all need homes, but what about the homes of nature.

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This story's going to grow, and we're going to talk

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about this a lot. I will get into the area,

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I will walk into the unfiltered areas, and I probably

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will get yelled at for being in areas that I

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don't need to be in. But I want a document

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this change in this forest that has been a part

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of my life for thirty two years. This is where

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I come to write. This is where I receive. And

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if you think I'm the only one, I'm not sure

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that's true. We just don't sit around in circles and

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talk about how this energy moves the reach and every

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one of us him Eryl. Thanks for being a part

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of the conversation.