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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. A lot of tree limbs

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on the ground. We've been in the high nineties and

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one hundred plus degree temperatures for the past week and

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a half. Now, these trees have taken a hit. We

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always think of the passing storms. Oh it's going to

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bring down a tree. Yeah, so is heat. It's going

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to dry up the roots. They're not getting water, and

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it's going to dry up everything that is old on

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these trees. But as I make my way through this forest,

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I'm just blown away by the number of limbs that

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are on the ground. And with this not even into

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the dog days of so yet, what's going to happen?

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How is this forest going to evolve? I don't see

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anybody replenishing the soil. I see them chopping down the

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trees because they're doing everything they can to protect their

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homes from these fallen branches. Man, all these branches the

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remnants of a story that nobody knows. And that's one

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of the reasons why I like coming out here in

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this forest, to be able to look at the lay

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of the land, to study what the animals are doing.

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How friendly the deer are. The hawk always so playful,

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but yet when it's one hundred plus degrees inside this forest,

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I don't see the hawk. I don't see the deer.

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But where do they go? Where do they go to

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find their coolness? To be able to participate with the

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everyday world without burning up. As for these fallen branches,

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someone's going to have to pick them up, because we

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can't become one of those societies, or we can't become

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one of those forests that could be ignited in fires

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that take out entire neighborhoods. You've seen them, you might

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have experienced them. The hurricane season is underway. These weak trees,

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how strong are they? Because you don't know when a

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hurricane is going to hit and where it's going to hit.

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But right now it's time to pick up the fallen branches,

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with nothing inside those limbs telling you what their story was.

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Yet they've been here, some of them over forty or

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fifty years. What is the story? The best thing to

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do is to just listen, to participate, to reactivate. I

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think it's time to replenish the forest because a lot

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has come down. Hey, thanks for being a part of

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the conversation.