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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. Welcome back

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to the forest. You know. For the longest time, on

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these little stories that we share, I've talked about Swan Lake,

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which also has the name Silver Lake, because the streets

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that lead up to them have that as the name

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of the street. If it says it's Swan Lake and

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at the end of that is a lake, it must

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be Swan Lake or Silver Lake, Right. That's how we're

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convinced that that must be true. But it's not true.

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I've learned over the past seven to ten days that

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this lake really has a deeper history than what I think.

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The actual name of this lake is Ivy Lake. They

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owned a lot of land before everybody started moving in

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from around the country and from around the world. The

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Ivys had this lake that they used for entertainment purposes.

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They also used it to keep the cattle fed. This

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is cattle country, this is livestock country, and so before

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everybody moved in, this is where the animals roamed around freely,

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which is every bit the reason why I totally believe

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and support why the deer are here, why the hawks

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play around, and the owls, the squirrels, all of the

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wildlife that is here. If we knew the history of

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the lay of the land before our arrival, and that

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includes everybody who lived in your area of the forest

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long before you got there, then you know what, The

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story becomes thicker, and there is nothing wrong with an nice,

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thick book, something that holds the story. One of the

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things that Dolly Parton once said that really continues to

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vibrate inside my heart. She used to say, country music

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is more than what you think it is. Country music

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is how we used to get the word out about

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our little gatherings of people. So if Johnny was sick,

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it would show up in a country song, and that

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country song would pass from this small collection of people

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to that small collection of people, and eventually it becomes regional.

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But it never really became national, not until radio jumped

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in and said, oh, we can do something with this.

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And of course the Grand Ole Opry was all about

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getting a wider reach and everything. But it makes you wonder,

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what kind of music, what kind of creativity, what kind

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of that universal language lived inside this force by Ivy Lake,

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not Swan, not Silver, but Ivy Lake before we got here,

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and were their poets and authors, songwriters and dreamers that

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sat on the edge of that lake and really felt

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that the future was speaking to them. Leave something for

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those that will one day be asking what was it like?

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He thanks for being a part of the conversation.