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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. Winter is setting in as

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we enter the month of December. One look at the

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forecasts and it's going to be twenty one degrees at night,

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maybe even colder daytime highs barely in the mid forties.

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It's not as cold as what we've had in years past,

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but it is a reminder that wintertime has arrived. It's

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knocking on our hearts. It's knocking on our imaginations because

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it's very tough to walk through this forest to see

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the naked trees, to clearly see the hawks and owls.

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What are they hiding behind? But those squirrels, they just

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continuously keep working. They're building their homes, they're saving their

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food for the winter months. I watch them, because if

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they're saving a lot, what should that tell the human

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who lives in this forest. Temperatures are getting cold doesn't

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mean I'm going to stay inside. My thing is to

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enjoy everything outside, and the thing about this forest, and

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it could be like so many others, that has soft

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whisper like I'm doing right now, can easily be heard

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on the other side of the lake. So I often

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wonder is somebody hearing me in the way of saying, Hey,

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step out into the forest. This is not a neighborhood.

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This is a collection of trees that just happens to

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invite humans to participate with its beauty, no matter what

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the season is, wintertime knocking on our hearts. Hey, human,

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come out to play. If you get to know this year,

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stay a lot longer than you normally do, because it

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doesn't happen all the time. Just enjoy it. Enjoy the silence,

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the solitude, and the beauty of being free, just like

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the wind. Hi, MARYL. Thanks for being a part of

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a conversation.