Forest Stories Episode One Hundred Twenty One A Mid Winter Drought Sets In

0:00Hey, when it comes to podcasts, listening, are you like me? I mean, it's like television surfing. You're like all over the place looking for that one thing that you can add to your moment of now. Be it four stories, be it rock star stories, talking with a chef, whatever you're looking for. That's what arrow.net is all about ARROE.net. The searching is over. It's all in one place. Enjoy the exploration. Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation. Welcome to four stories. A series of short-winded adventures within a collection of skyscraping trees stuck feet first in Georgia clay right here in Carolina. It's been a huge part of my daily journey for over 33 years. I am the poet in the forest, a children's series written and recorded in the 1990s. It's grown into multiple podcasts that now reach around the world and none of it would be possible without this forest right here in South Charlotte, North Carolina. At the base of heartbreak hills, it's a sign that reads rainbow forest. Well, it's time you get to meet what's inspired several generations.

1:00Long before the paved paths decorated with colorful homes colonized around this beautiful lake, slow-moving stream flatland swamps and array of natural animals. There were families and business owners who are said to have raised into this area for the beauty of the land, wild roses, migratory birds and wild grapevines. Those before me either forgot to write about it, or it's buried somewhere inside their family tree. Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation. Welcome back to the forest. It is a cold rainy day inside this forest today. It's one of those where you can't help but wonder what Mother Nature is up to. She can't decide if it's a spring day or if it's a winter day. Oh, by the way, let me just kind of cloud things up a bit, put some rain in there, and then you'll forget what kind of day it really is. No, you can't, especially for me because I just spent three days in a different forest. It was the Lake Norman State Forest. And, you know, it's one of those things where you learned a long, long, long time ago, if you're a tree hugger like me.

2:03There's no such thing as two forests the same. I cannot compare this forest to Lake Norman, the Uri Forest, or a forest in the cascades out there in Washington State. You can't compare them. They all have their own personality. But what you can do with your forest in life is that you can observe the nature around them and accept all living things. That includes the weeds. Oh, my God, I wish more people would fall in love with the weeds on their forest floor like I do. I mean, it's like the tiniest little creations and I will be inspired like a three-year-old kid discovering his first Tonka truck just by a weed. Especially when it's raining like this because that weed is doing one thing. It's got a job to do. Collect water for the roots. Whoa, well, that seems like a simple job. And then you go, is it, especially since the state of North Carolina declared today that this is the first time since the 80s that we are in a drought, a hard core drought?

3:05So what does that mean for this forest? Well, you got to keep an eye on it and you got to be out here on days such as this where it is raining and you study the path. You study the pattern of what's going on with the erosion as a human being. You can do everything you can to help try to kind of like circumvent what's going on with the erosion. But you're not ever, you're never going to stop it. You just got to figure out how to create different paths and going different directions. And really the true question is, is that how deep do you want to go with your shovel? I tried to do that, man, at the bottom of the hill, out there by the slow moving stream. We had such, such erosion that I thought, okay, I'm going to create a little diversion here, a little canal of sorts. And I'm going to take the water that's moving down that 95 foot drop and I'm going to put it here. Are you kidding me? Do you really think that in all the research that I did and the people that I talked to that I could move that water? No, no, Moses is still the only one that can move water and because I couldn't.

4:09And it's just one of those things where you just kind of raise your arms and you go, you know what, I did the best that I could. This is the best I'm going to do and I can only, only hope that the water damage can find different patterns to move through. And it doesn't happen that way. So as you allow the forest that you live within to do their natural thing, you realize when you walk into a home depot or a lows, you go, hmm. There's that magazine cover for you right there. Hey, on your next magazine cover, Mr. Lowe's man. Why don't you put a picture of a forest in there, a city forest, something that has been tattered and torn by the winds and the rain and the acid that's in that rain and the drought. That's right. The drought for the entire state because a forest, no matter what, will survive beyond the human's intentions. And if the drought gets just as bad as it is up in Utah, Montana and Wyoming, then plant wisely.

5:11Go and find out what is natural in your community. Hell, your forest could be your backyard. I'm okay with that. Just have your place of solitude peace and an area where you can just receive, receive whatever you want. That's the thing about it. It's like your mom and dad saying, where do you guys want to go out to eat tonight? And all of a sudden, it's a free form fall for wherever we're going to go. And if you end up at six or seven different restaurants like we used to do because we had eight kids, then it's like, okay, that was an event. That was the adventure. The same is true about a forest, whether I'm at Lake Norman, whether I'm here in this forest, there are no two forests the same. And this one, it's got a life and song all its own. Thanks for being a part of the conversation.