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Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation. This

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is Forest Stories. I'm the Poet in the Forest, a

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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.

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Speaker 2: A friend recently asked me questions about what is it

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like to walk on a forest floor, and I said,

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it's very dangerous. He didn't understand. I said, look, let

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me tell you something. Beneath all those limbs and those leaves,

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there are gigantic holes that were created by roots and

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the earth fell into those holes. So therefore, if you

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don't go into that forest with an education of understanding

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where those holes are, there's a big chance by the

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time you get to the other side of the forest,

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then what's going to happen is is you're going to

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have bruised legs. You're going to fall into those holes.

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Lord knows I've done that. So as I walk through

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this forest today. The one thing that I've noticed in

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a little meadowed area which is just on the edge

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of the forest, I'm seeing there are marks and little

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signifiers that are telling people if you walk across this meadow,

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expect holes. And there's a lot of holes that I'm

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seeing inside this forest right now, which makes me wonder

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how much the land is really shifting. Is a d

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to the drought? Is it due to the real torrential

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downpourse that we had about a month ago? What is

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creating all of these holes? And I'm glad that the

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owners of this meadow give us the opportunity to say,

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I don't think I'm gonna walk over there. That doesn't

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look like it's going to be a healthy answer if

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I choose to get any closer than that. But I

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am keeping my eye on the cave which is at

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the very top of Heartbreak Hill. And the reason why

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is because with that cave, is it becoming deeper because

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of all of the rain? Is it starting to rumble

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on the inside because of the drought. I've got to

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get into this cave to find out what is happening

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with the earth now beneath my house. My house by

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the way is built out over a hill, I'm able

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to look at the lay of the land and see

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what it's doing down there, because everything is pushing itself forward.

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And the question is how can you stop this? Or

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can you because in reality, and I've written about this

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a thousand times inside my journals, so that none of

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this really belongs to me. That's the reason why I

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can't say it's mine. I'm just here as part of

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the story, and I want to thank you for taking

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the time to listen to it.