Speaker 1: Hey, when it comes to podcasts listening, are you like me?
I mean, it's like television surfing. You're like all over
the place looking for that one thing that you can
add to your moment of now. Be it forest stories,
be it rockstar stories, talking with a chef, whatever you're
looking for. That's what ero dot net is all about.
Arrooe dot net. The searching is over. It's all in
one place. Enjoy the exploration. Hey, thanks for being a
part of the conversation. Welcome to Forest Stories, a series
of short winded adventures within a collection of skyscraping trees,
stuck feet first and Georgia Clay right here in Carolina.
It's been a huge part of my daily journey for
over thirty three years. I Am the Poet in the Forest,
a children's series written and recorded in the nineteen nineties.
It's grown into multiple podcasts that now reach around the world,
and none of it would be possible without this forest
right here in South Charlotte, North Carolina, at the base
of Heartbreak Hills. It's a sign that reads Rainbow Forest. Well,
it's time you get to meet what's inspired several generations
long before the paved paths decorated with colorful homes colonized
around this beautiful lake, slow moving stream, flatland, swamps and
array of natural animals. There were families and business owners
who are said to have raised into this area for
the beauty of the land, wild roses, migratory birds, and
wild grapevines. Those before me either forgot to write about
it or it's buried somewhere inside their family tree. Hey,
thanks for being a part of the conversation.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the forest. A forest floor, there's no
guarantee that it's going to look like a lows or
a home depot. A forest floor is always going to
come with its shapes and surprises. The leaves changed the
forest floor as well as the branches, as so often
you don't see what's beneath those leaves and branches because
a hole has developed from the rainstorms that came along
while you weren't looking, and now there's holes there and
it will trip you up in a bad way. But
the part of the forest floor that Jazzy and I
laugh about a lot, and we do, is when you're
walking and something It could have been a deer, it
could have been a hawk, it could have been any
living creature happened to pick the path that you walk
on on a daily basis to puke, yeah, to vomit,
to put on the planet something that was making their
stomach feel just torn up or ripped apart, And so
Jazzy and I will come up upon it and all
of a sudden, it's like we look at each other, going,
what is it? I don't know, what do you think
it is? And you look inside this vomit or puke
and you look for things that what it could be.
Was it something that irritated their stomaching like with a dog,
it could be grass? What was in there? Did the
did the owl or the crow? Did it eat something
that they should not have? Even though the warning on
the bottle said you're probably going to get sick, But
what is it on a forest floor, especially when you
come up with vomit from other living creatures that you
just sit there and you're fascinated by it. You don't
want the smell to get in your nose, but it does.
You don't want the image of something that would probably
make you sick in your own stomach take over your mind, body,
and soul, but it does. But you kind of feel
like the old Cheechen Shong joke. Look at that? What
is it? Looks like dog shit to me? Smell it?
What smell it? What's it smell like? Ooh yeah, smell
like dog shit? Have you heard that joke before? It's
the truth. It's like you sit there and you see
the vomit on the forest floor from another living creature,
and you go, Jasey, you're down there with your nose,
baby girl, what's it smell like? And you want to
you want to smell it? Am I going to taste it?
I don't know. I don't know. But there could come
that day where we're inside this forest and it's like,
you know, we have not ever tasted that, and would
that be a bad decision if we just became wiser
in the moment. You know, there's a lot of people
right now saying that's the most stupid, idiotic thing I've
ever heard in my life. And yet, when you live
in a forest and you've tasted so many things inside
this forest that are not part of recipe books, what
do you do when you come across fresh vomit? Yeah,
you laugh about it, but in reality, what are we
learning from it? And why on my forest? Floor where
we walk. Did you have to plant your presentation. It's
not my business. I'm just a visitor. Thanks for being
a part of the conversation.