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Speaker 1: Hey, when it comes to podcasts listening, are you like me?

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I mean, it's like television surfing. You're like all over

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the place looking for that one thing that you can

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add to your moment of now. Be it forest stories,

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be it rockstar stories, talking with a chef, whatever you're

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looking for. That's what ero dot net is all about.

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Arrooe dot net. The searching is over. It's all in

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one place. Enjoy the exploration. Hey, thanks for being a

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part of the conversation. Welcome to Forest Stories, a series

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of short winded adventures within a collection of skyscraping trees,

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stuck feet first and Georgia Clay right here in Carolina.

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It's been a huge part of my daily journey for

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over thirty three years. I Am the Poet in the Forest,

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a children's series written and recorded in the nineteen nineties.

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It's grown into multiple podcasts that now reach around the world,

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and none of it would be possible without this forest

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right here in South Charlotte, North Carolina, at the base

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of Heartbreak Hills. It's a sign that reads Rainbow Forest. Well,

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it's time you get to meet what's inspired several generations

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long before the paved paths decorated with colorful homes colonized

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around this beautiful lake, slow moving stream, flatland swamps, and

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array of natural animals. There were families and business owners

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who are said to have raised into this area for

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the beauty of the land, wild roses, migratory birds, and

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wild grapevines. Those before me either forgot to write about

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it or it's buried somewhere inside their family tree. Hey,

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thanks for being a part of the conversation.

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to the forest. Sunshine twenty four degrees, This

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forest his ice cold. I've written about these cold temperatures

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for so many years, thirty three to be exact, because

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that's how long I've been in this forest. Because it

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feels like that, even though they say that we've got

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climate control issues on this planet. Yeah, how come you're

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not walking with me in this forest right now? I mean,

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I'm looking at this beautiful lake. It's just so still.

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It's almost like a saying, don't move. We're all cold.

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We don't want to do anything but just sit here.

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In fact, I can see layers of ice starting to

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build up. When it's that cold, it doesn't take that

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long to put the ice up on top. No birds

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in the sky today, I don't see any squirrels. I

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just see the leaves doing what leaves do. In fact,

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one just fell in front of me, and it's that dance.

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I always call it the final dance. I once wrote

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and produced a song that was called the Final Dance

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that was heavily, heavily, heavily inspired by the falling of

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a leaf. And then I began to think that here's

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this situation where every year nature gives us this opportunity

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to learn some things about our everyday world. And part

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of that process is understanding what that final dance is.

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And it can be a human form, it can be

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something that you've done with your pets. It's that final dance.

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I don't mean that as a negative, because I don't

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believe that when you put leaves inside the ground, or

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you allow them to be on the forest floor, that's

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a negative. That is a giving tree to a soil

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that needs the nutrients, to the animals that need these

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leaves to build their homes. Hey, let me go up

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here on this tree right now and knock on the

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front door of this squirrel and ask him, can I

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get my leaves back? That was part of my tree?

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That gave me some sunshine and some shade over the summer,

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and you're stepping on my property. Those leaves belong to me.

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I have a feeling that little squirrel would look at

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me and say, you've got less than thirty seconds to

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get out of my tree, because in all honesty, none

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of this belongs to you. But it's cold. It is

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so cold in this forest, and my writing today dealt

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with exactly that, in the way of saying you cannot

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predict what winter is going to do. I mean, there's

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no snow on the ground as of yet, but we're

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not even into December yet. It's just a very cold

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fall day because winter doesn't hit this forest until December

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twenty first. And that's another thing that brings up a

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lot of it anxiety to a lot of creative people,

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especially these animals. Oh my, I do find it very

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fascinating to see how our lifestyles changed when we switched

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the clocks back an hour, but yet their body clocks

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did not change. That they are doing what they do,

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and it feels like that the human being is an

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hour behind. So when I say that I don't see

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the squirrels, I don't see the birds, I don't see

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all of these other things that are usually inside this forest,

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especially the deer with their unbelievably thick coats for the winter,

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and they are dark this year. Once again, I can't

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predict the winter. But what happens, though, when the process

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of what we're doing as a family, all animals, what happens.

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We've got to be able to recognize each other's strengths,

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because if we're going to try to predict it, like

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the Farmer's Almanac, there's gonna be a lot of people

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out there trying to plant seeds in the ground that

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really shouldn't have done it. They should avoided There was

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one more frost on the way. Hey, thanks for being

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a part of the conversation.