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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 beautiful fall day in

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this forest. The wind pretty strong, pretty strong. That means

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there's a lot of leaves that are dancing right now.

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I call that the final dance. These leaves blossom and

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stretch out in the spring months, spreading pallen all over

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the place, and then by the time faul gets here,

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then they take that dance. It's got a calling. The

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trees calling is it's got to go down and feed

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Mother Earth. It's got to create warmth for animals that

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may need it, such as the squirrel up in the tree.

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These trees with their dance, some of them so elegant,

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others looks like a leaf is crashing. But you kind

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of laugh about it. And you move forward with it

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is what you do. But I learned something about the

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tree today that's very touching. I've always said that I

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love my trees. I've been with them since nineteen ninety two.

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I really put a lot of love with the trees.

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A tree doesn't love us, which shocked me. If I'm

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sharing so much love with these trees, why doesn't it

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love me back? So I kept reading What a tree does.

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It embraces your touch, It can feel your touch. A

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tree uses its senses to speak with other living plants.

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They take care of each other. They communicate in ways

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that the human being has to use words, but not

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a tree, not the other living things. They have their

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own language, and they take care of each other. The

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fascinating thing about it is is that a tree is

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said to have a pulse, but it doesn't have a heart.

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How can it have a pulse? A tree shares that pulse.

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So when I take these walks inside this forest, I

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feel that pulse. These trees are communicating with me. It

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doesn't have to be about Hey, I love you, It's

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about protecting each other. Hey, thanks for being a part

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of the conversation.