Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation. This
is Forest Stories. I'm the Poet in the Forest, a
children's series that I pinned out in the nineteen nineties. Now,
none of it would be possible if it wasn't for
this forest right here in South Charlotte, North Carolina. I
talk about it so much that I thought maybe it's
time that you get to know what has inspired me
for thirty years. Thanks for being a part of the conversation.
Welcome back to the forest. There's no hidden fact. Nineteen
ninety seven, February of that year, we started a journey
planting seventeen hundred trees inside this collection of trees. And
the reason why is because of a thing called acid rain.
You never hear of acid rain anymore, but the trees
that are in this forest were dying very quickly. They
were falling, and so I felt it in my heart, well,
I don't want a bear land here because that's going
to cause even more destruction when it comes to erosion.
I know, let's plant trees. So I got together with
people from the Boy Scouts as well as the state
of North Carolina, and we started the journey to plant
seventeen hundred trees in February of nineteen ninety seven. What
I didn't know is what would happen, and that is
an umbrella would take shape above our heads. Tree limbs, branches,
leaves a lot of shade. Now, a lot of people
in the South crave that shade because they believe it
helps keep you cool. That's not true. When you have
an umbrella of trees above you, it keeps that heat inside,
and all of a sudden, the heat and the humidity
begin to fry your brain. Not only that, but it
tortures the ground below the area where we had green,
I mean weeds, some grass green, which is what I love.
I love green. But when you plant seventeen hundred trees
and that umbrella is above you, no, the green doesn't
last because it needs the sun in order to survive.
So it took on the shape of an honest to
God real forest floor to help make it look nice
and to accept the beauty of the natural forest. What
we would do is we would work with tree cutters
that would send over the remains of trees because they
would chop them up in the wood shipper. So we
would take the woodships and we would put it on
the forest floor. And then I heard another calling. It
was this year twenty twenty five, all these chapters later
plants something so they can become green again. What Yeah,
I wanted to be green again. That's what I hurt
in my heart. So it was like, we got to
do it, and so I planted all of this beautiful
natural grass. And what's so funny about that is that
we had to clear all of the woodships out what
was left of them very fertile soil, whereas back in
nineteen ninety seven it was pretty much clay. It was ugly.
It really was being brutalized by the erosion. That's why
we planted the trees. But now the land was very fertile,
and I hurt in my heart. Find the green. So
we did. A week and a half after we planted
the seeds that would create the green, I walked outside
and there are deer laying in that grass, big dough
and I just sat there and I thought, is this
what I heard nature saying, give me a place to rest.
Don't usually find deer laying on the ground unless they're tired,
and they don't sleep at night, trust me not. What
the coyotes around here, but all of that green that
I was asked to put back in the ground has
become the bed for those that are deer? Am I angry? No, no,
this force doesn't belong to me. I'm just somebody who writes,
and I write poetry as well as real life things.
But did walk out there and to see the deer
laying in all of that green? I'm not sure you'd
even find that in a Disney movie. And thanks for
being a part of the conversation.