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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. Inside this forest, there are

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several different homes. I say homes because people who live

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in these homes have a lot of.

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Speaker 2: Love for their home. There's a lot of family love,

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there's love for the land, a lot of love for

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the forest. Every now and then we'll have a home

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that'll sit empty for a very long period of time.

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I remember Herb's home, which is next to the lake,

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I stayed empty for almost four years. A man from

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China bought the home. He brought his little girl from China.

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She must have been maybe four or five years old,

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stayed there for about one and a half years and

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then moved on. And the reason why he moved on

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was because he wanted to go back home. His daughter

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was wanting to learn more American things, especially English, and

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it was bothering him deeply, and through her studies, she

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wanted nothing to do with Chinese tradition. So he sold

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the home and moved back to China. The home sat

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empty for maybe maybe six or seven months. But still,

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when you see a home in a forest and it

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sits empty, you can't help but feel the chilliness of

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the air, the warmth that a home brings. Now, ken

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On Loma's home sits empty a lot because they traveled

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the world. It's not that they've moved out. It's just

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that it's empty once again. If you don't see the

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lights on, if you don't see movement, if you don't

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see ken out there working on the lawn, trimming the trees,

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or even a stack of branches ready to be picked

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up by the city, it's chilly. It's cold next to them.

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Ron and Carroll's house which sold almost three years ago

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and the owners have never moved in, never, But they've

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got two cars there that have no license plates, thinking that,

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oh well, if there's cars in the driveway, somebody must

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live there. It's cold. It's chilly. Empty homes in a forest.

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Some people might say it's our investments. You don't have

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to live in it. Every now and then we might

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stay there, but it's our home. We'll do what we

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want with it. Really, an answer like that is cold.

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It's chilly. Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation.