Latest / Arroe Collins Like It's Live / Forest Stories Episode One Hundred Forty Five Visiting A Flat Land Swamp Nature Preserve

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Forest Stories Episode One Hundred Forty Five Visiting A Flat Land Swamp Nature Preserve · Arroe Collins Like It's Live

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, when it comes to podcast listening, are you like me?
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's like television surfing. You're like all over
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the place looking for that one thing that you can
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: add to your moment of now. Be it four stories,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: be it rock star stories, talking with a chef, whatever
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: you're looking for. That's what arrow.net is all about. A-R-R-O-E.net.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: The searching is over. It's all in one place. Enjoy
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the exploration. Hey, thanks for being a part of the conversation.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Four Stories.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: A series of short-winded adventures within a collection of skyscraping
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: trees stuck feet first in Georgia clay right here in Carolina.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: It's been a huge part of my daily journey for
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  Speaker 2: over 33 years. I am the poet in the forest,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: a children's series written and recorded in the 1990s. It's
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: grown into multiple podcasts that now reach around the world,
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: and none of it would be possible without this forest
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  Speaker 2: right here in South Charlotte, North Carolina. At the base
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  Speaker 2: of Heartbreak Hill sits a sign that reads, RAINBOW FOREST. Well,
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  Speaker 2: it's time you get to meet what's inspired several generations.
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  Speaker 2: Long before the paved paths decorated with colorful homes colonized
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  Speaker 2: around this beautiful lake, slow-moving stream, flatland swamps, and array
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  Speaker 2: of natural animals, there were families and business owners who
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  Speaker 2: are said to have raced into this area for the
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  Speaker 2: beauty of the land, wild roses, migratory birds, and wild grapevines.
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  Speaker 2: Those before me either forgot to write about it, or
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  Speaker 2: it's buried somewhere inside their family tree. Hey, thanks for
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  Speaker 2: being a part of the conversation. Welcome back to the forest.
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  Speaker 1: Not my forest today. The reason being is because I'm
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  Speaker 1: here to study, to watch, to observe, to be able
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  Speaker 1: to participate, to listen. I'm at the Flat Branch Nature Preserve,
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  Speaker 1: which I've always been so jealous of this little area
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  Speaker 1: because we've actually watched this basically a flatland swamp area
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  Speaker 1: that the world has totally ignored for decades. become this
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  Speaker 1: amazing nature preserve because somebody took the time to put
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: their vision forward, to be able to listen to everything
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  Speaker 1: that was going on around them by way of nature
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  Speaker 1: speaking through them, to them, around them, and beyond them.
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  Speaker 1: Which seems like a poet's kind of talk, right? Until
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  Speaker 1: you've experienced what can happen when you take the time
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  Speaker 1: to listen to the soil, to participate with a future,
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  Speaker 1: that is totally 100% unwritten, and you can't even write
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  Speaker 1: it because you don't know what tomorrow is always going
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  Speaker 1: to bring. But I'm at this nature preserve today because
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  Speaker 1: this is exactly what I envisioned for my own forest. Sure,
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  Speaker 1: I've got this beautiful forest with this gigantic heartbreak hill,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: lake ivy, the slow-moving stream with the wild tall grasses.
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  Speaker 1: But the people don't come. Well, because they're not invited yet.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: But one day they will be. And I want them
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  Speaker 1: to be able to experience exactly this. The path leading
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  Speaker 1: through the trees. A place of creativity. The bewilderment of
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  Speaker 1: the unexpected. Gigantic stones where people can come to write.
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  Speaker 1: The birds that are so willing to sing. And although
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  Speaker 1: I've never seen the deer, come on, we're talking about
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  Speaker 1: a flatland swamp here. Why wouldn't there be deer and
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  Speaker 1: other wild creatures just willing to speak openly with the
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  Speaker 1: human being? But why, after all these years and decades,
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  Speaker 1: has it never grown beyond what it is, this forest
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  Speaker 1: that I keep by Heartbreak Hill? Because it's owned by
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  Speaker 1: the masses. Because not everybody shares the same dream, the
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  Speaker 1: same vision. This is a piece of land, this nature preserve,
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  Speaker 1: that the world pretty much threw away. They didn't want it.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: But then somebody came along one day and said, we
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  Speaker 1: do want it. And more importantly, we want to share it.
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  Speaker 1: And so as you walk through these trees and you
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: really do observe a southern flatland swamp, you find yourself
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: in a position of thought. What can we do to
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  Speaker 1: extend the energy of this particular nature preserve? And what's
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  Speaker 1: so fascinating about this, it's barely two miles away from
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  Speaker 1: my forest. So that tells me at one point in time,
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  Speaker 1: it was all connected. It became disconnected. because man had
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  Speaker 1: the vision and nature had to be set aside. Hey,
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  Speaker 1: thanks for being a part of the conversation.