Michigan Forest Life - December 29, 2025

Welcome to Michigan Forest Life,

When I received a memories collage from OneDrive showing old winter photos from what is now Winterfield Pines Nature Sanctuary (Photo 1), the thing that caught my eye was the small photo at the lower left – a photo of me lifting a hand-built wooden ladder into place. The ladder was 16 feet long and just reached the Treehouse platform. In those days, I lowered the ladder each time we were away and locked it to a tree forty feet away.  The platform had no railing for the first five years of its existence, and it would not have been safe for a stray person wandering the woods to go up the ladder without railing protection.  I remember an uncle coming up to the sit in the Treehouse with me one day – Uncle Stan.

“This place is great,” Stan said, “but don’t you think it would be better with a railing around it?

Just a single board that you could rest your gun on.”

Uncle Stan was appealing the sign carved into the Treehouse structural support:

“Dan’s Hunting Blind”

I remember when a cousin looked at the same sign and joked, “But of course we knew that!” as if it was some kind of warning. I resisted the railing.  I did not want it to block the view. But it was a bit precarious. The ladder was a beast.  It was easy enough to foresee that I would age out of the ladder process at some point. I thought about staircase concepts for a year. Drawing different ideas. Mocking up different arrangements. I wanted to be able to block off the staircase – to prevent people from climbing up to the Treehouse platform when I was away. There was a standard staircase concept that pivoted up like an attic stair; I gave up on that.  Eventually I zeroed in on the spiral staircase and spent another six months working out the details. It had a counterweighted drawbridge that would pivot up to block the stair (Photo 2, 3). I built the pieces at home during workday evenings, transported them to ‘The Property’ (as we called Winterfield Pines Nature Sanctuary in those days), and assembled the staircase and drawbridge in one day. The staircase and drawbridge is a great design. Simple. The drawbridge has a clever locking feature when in its closed position (Photo 4). 

I added the railing – the last item of Treehouse construction. It was six years after anchoring the first treehouse boards to the trees. I sat in a chair on the Treehouse porch and breathed in a deep, gratifying breath of pure forest air, knowing that the Treehouse was finished.

Life is good.

Today’s teaser for FOREST LEGEND: THE TALE OF OL’ SPLIT TOE is preview snippet 14 of 27

(Photo 5). Read and enjoy! 

I wish you gratifying reflection on a project from the past, and a slew of happy memories rippling from its completion.

Until next time,

Dan

Excerpt from Chapter 18

AD 1911 - While Split Toe stood between two rows of corn not far from Grace and Angus’s corral, he heard the putt-putting sound of a motorcar coming down the road for the first time. It was still a long distance away. Soon, he noticed that the family had all stopped what they were doing to run to the roadside where they could get a close look as it passed.

The car belonged to Jake, Edra’s brother. He’d driven the new network of country roads all the way from Chicago. The trip took a full week. Angus’s family members elbowed each other, vying for the closest viewing spot as the motorcar approached. But the closer the eighteen-miles-per-hour machine got, the more its high speed scared them. Finally, when the vehicle was about one hundred yards away, the whole family scattered to a safer distance where the high-speed driving machine could not run them over.

Copyright @ 2025 by Daniel S. Ellens

Pre-order now on Amazon

Publication Date: March 31, 2026

Praise for FOREST LEGEND:

“FOREST LEGEND: THE TALE OF OL’ SPLIT TOE provides a unique perspective on the natural world and humanity’s place in it. Through charming storytelling and deep reverence for Mother Nature, the book both entertains and inspires a fresh look at the world that surrounds us.”

– Mary Radcliffe, Self-described forest enjoyer and frequent hiker, Chairperson of Data Science at State Navigate.