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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. The sad thing about being

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in this forest for as many years as we've been

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the memories they do fade. They go away pretty quickly

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as to the people that you have surrounded yourself with.

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What's really interesting about these modern times? And I had

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to deal with this during the COVID lockdown inside this forest,

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there was a thing that I dubbed the COVID house.

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A lot of homes went dark. You didn't see anybody

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go in or come out, and so I always called

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it the COVID house. Did they leave the area? Did

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they transition? Why is this house and why are these

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houses sitting here completely blank? I'm having to deal with

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that again with Ron and Carroll's house no, it wasn't.

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Covid Ron and Carroll did sell their home to professional

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home owners. You know what that means, don't you. They

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just buy them. They buy them to have them, not

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for people to move in. And so this beautiful home

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in the center of this forest has been sitting here

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now one hundred percent empty going on two and a

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half years. And just down the hill we've talked about

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this the pig Lady. Her house has now been empty

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a year. So there's a lot of emptiness back into

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this forest. And when we take this transition walk through

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this forest, even on a cloudy day like today, you

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can't help but feel just as empty as those homes,

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because I knew they were homes. We went into those homes,

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We celebrated the holidays together inside those homes. And she

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was called the pig Lady for a negative reason because

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she had a pig. She raised a pig, and so

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we always called her the pig Lady. But the home

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is empty, and those of us that travel through this forest,

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we do feel that emptiness. But how do you get

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it back if you've got professional home owners in control

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of the situation. I mean, they even parked cars in

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the driveway without license plates. But you know, I tried

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to ask him about it, and he just told me

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to go away. And I said, hey, you're making this

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forest look like a ghetto, and he goes a ghetto.

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Do you think this forest looks like a ghetto because

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of my two cars without license plates? Yeah? Yeah I do. Hey,

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thanks for being a part of the conversation.