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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. This morning, in my daily writing,

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I spoke about the forest in the way that how

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does summertime sound inside this beautiful lay of land in

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South Charlotte, North Carolina. The sounds of summer here are

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filled with human created sounds. In the distance. I do

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hear a duck, but I'm not hearing what you would

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normally hear inside a forest because the humans have cranked

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up their music. They're talking louder to speak over that music,

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and they're having backyard barbecues and celebrations. But when the

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hawk flies over my head making this normal sound, you

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don't hear it because of the lawnmowers, because of the

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weed whackers, the blowers, people reving up their car engines,

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the music, everything is going on around us during the

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summer months. I can see it, but how can I

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bring it to you? That's always been my quest. How

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can I invite this forest into your thought pattern? If

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all were recognizing is what we're hearing, I would love

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to paint for you and share with you the beauty

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of this unbelievable lake that has been here longer than

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anybody who is living inside this forest. It used to

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be a lake that was looked upon as being a

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family's escape. That's where they went during their summer months,

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before the music arrived, before the backyard barbecues, before the

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leaf blowers and the lawnmowers. A beautiful lake inside this forest.

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And I get the stream part of that when you

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step inside my areas, a slow paced stream that you

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can't even hear anymore unless it's been raining outside pretty hard.

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Then I go out there and I sit beside it,

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as dangerous as it can be, and I just listen

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the flow of water, the flow of nature, because when

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it's raining, the human isn't doing anything with backyard barbecues,

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loud music and trying to speak over it. Hey, thanks

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for being a part of the conversation