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Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation. This

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is Forest Stories. I'm the Poet in the Forest, a

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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.

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Speaker 2: When someone across the lake is hosting a barbecue, I

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mean it smells like they're cooking the full pig. Oh

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my god, the scent of that hickory, the scent of

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that meat in the air. Across the lake. There they are.

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You can see them out there with the smoke going

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in every direction. I don't know how I feel about that,

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because sometimes I feel like it's an invasion of MySpace

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because I didn't get an invitation. I did not get

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a letter in my mailbox. I said, hey, you're invited,

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but hey, come smell my meat. And you sit there

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and you go, oh man, you're teasing the hell out

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of me. And if I just go to a restaurant.

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It ain't gonna taste as good as your smell across

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that lake. And if I sit here and try to

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do it myself, well that's work. And I don't want

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to send my smell in your direction because your barbecue

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is probably much better than mine. I'm gonna go the cheap,

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cheap way of getting my barbecue in place. But you know,

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that's what's great about living in this forest is the openness.

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Everybody on this lake, this slow moving stream, within the trees.

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Everybody has their way of sharing their smell. They really do.

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I mean, there's a gentleman that actually burns wood every

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single day down by the lake because those are the limbs.

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He burns up the limbs of the trees that have fallen,

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and he sits there and he patiently just washes over

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the water, staring into the wandering mind of someone who

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just believes and being present. In fact, I read about

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that today. When you live in your past, it is

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your past, it's already happened. Your future is your imagination

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at work. The only place where life actually happens is

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in the present. So when I step out here this

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morning and I smell that barbecue, and I see that

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smoke across the lake. I sit there and wait for

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my smartphone to go ding ding ding ding ding, you know,

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an invitation. Hey, come on over. We've got pork that

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we've got on the grill and we want to share it.

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You know what, that's living in that future. That's my

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imagination going crazy. I need to be in the present

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and I need to look at these trees, look at

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the slow moving stream and the lake and know where

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I am. I don't see them out walking with their dog,

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feeling that light rain fall on you on a morning

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that is calm compared to the storms of last night.

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I'm probably the only one that's thinking like this, but

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that's okay. Take that stink and plant it. Hey, thanks

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for being a part of the conversation.