Michigan Forest Life - August 3, 2026

Greetings from the Treehouse at Winterfield Pines Nature Sanctuary (Photo 1). 

A brilliant moon shines in the night sky, casting shadows across the forest floor; shadows that climb every tree in their path; shadows that crawl up the side of the Treehouse and paint it with silhouettes that shift across its walls. 

Cool night air drifts through open treehouse windows. The oil lamp reflecting light off a knotty pine ceiling calls moths to the window screens.

A pack of coyotes howls and yipes. Adults and pups. Are they fighting or playing? What are they going on about? They are at the edge of the tag alder swamp, not far away.

Hachi, the dog who is with me while Cathy travels, hears them too.  He sits up, alert. He stands on the bed and looks into the darkness with a hint of a growl. Hachi is at camp for a few days (Photos 2, 3, 4). Walking the trails with me. Exploring forest smells. Listening to an owl's hooo-hoo-hoo-hoo, hoooo-hoo-hoo-hoooo. He remembers this place.

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John Muir wrote, "Between every two pine trees is a door to a new way of life." 

I imagine that curiosity - that possibility - for Hachi as he wanders the trails. Can he step from the civilized world where he grew up into a wilder world and become another wild thing in the forest? Is he drawn to it? Enticed by it? Does he, like me, glimpse something primal from the origins of his species as he steps through that door? Is he conscious of his own survival, of the food chain, or is he simply curious?

What does Hachi think when he hears the coyotes howl? They are not so unlike him. Cousins from the distant past. His instinct to protect his civilized caretakers overpowers a primal urge to join the pack. But does he glimpse that possibility and want to see what it is like? To go there and live it? Is it all or nothing? Can he walk through the door between two pines and someday find his way back? Or must he stay?

Perhaps that door between two pines for humans can be a new way of looking at the surrounding world. A new way of understanding a human's place in the natural order of things. For today’s humans, a glimpse into the way things once were. 

I wonder if Hachi is too civilized to still see that. Does he have too much trained devotion to still feel that instinct. Does his love for humans put all of that in the background? 

I sense that Hachi catches brief whiffs of a wild heritage as we spend time together in the woods, and in a joyous way it arouses in him a primal curiosity. It is good for a dog to spend time 'at camp.' It helps a dog to connect with parts of its character that it cannot touch in the civilized world. A connection with the distant past. 

Look between the pines. Do you want to go there? Walk through the door into a new world.

Until next time,

Dan.