Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation. This
is Forest Stories. I am 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. A lot of tree limbs
on the ground. We've been in the high nineties and
one hundred plus degree temperatures for the past week and
a half. Now, these trees have taken a hit. We
always think of the passing storms. Oh it's going to
bring down a tree. Yeah, so is heat. It's going
to dry up the roots. They're not getting water, and
it's going to dry up everything that is old on
these trees. But as I make my way through this forest,
I'm just blown away by the number of limbs that
are on the ground. And with this not even into
the dog days of so yet, what's going to happen?
How is this forest going to evolve? I don't see
anybody replenishing the soil. I see them chopping down the
trees because they're doing everything they can to protect their
homes from these fallen branches. Man, all these branches the
remnants of a story that nobody knows. And that's one
of the reasons why I like coming out here in
this forest, to be able to look at the lay
of the land, to study what the animals are doing.
How friendly the deer are. The hawk always so playful,
but yet when it's one hundred plus degrees inside this forest,
I don't see the hawk. I don't see the deer.
But where do they go? Where do they go to
find their coolness? To be able to participate with the
everyday world without burning up. As for these fallen branches,
someone's going to have to pick them up, because we
can't become one of those societies, or we can't become
one of those forests that could be ignited in fires
that take out entire neighborhoods. You've seen them, you might
have experienced them. The hurricane season is underway. These weak trees,
how strong are they? Because you don't know when a
hurricane is going to hit and where it's going to hit.
But right now it's time to pick up the fallen branches,
with nothing inside those limbs telling you what their story was.
Yet they've been here, some of them over forty or
fifty years. What is the story? The best thing to
do is to just listen, to participate, to reactivate. I
think it's time to replenish the forest because a lot
has come down. Hey, thanks for being a part of
the conversation.