Michigan Forest Life - January 18, 2026

Good day, friends,

Do you ever feel the call of the wilds tugging you hard to participate?  To step outside and feel the real temperature. Ignore the thermometer. Feel a breeze kiss your cheek. Listen to a group of lingering geese bark and honk as they decide whether they will really migrate this year.

“It’s cold,” they say, “but warmer on the ground than up with the wind.” 

Let the sun shine into your eyes, not filtered by a piece of glass, a screen, or a curtain. Or look at the stars. Breathe in, feel your lungs fill with the cold air. Is that what the geese feel when they breathe?

Find a tree. Get close. Follow the tree’s trunk from the ground to the top. Is it better in some way than the amazing image of a tree posted on your social media. Put your hand on the tree’s real bark. Feel its energy. Tell it that you are its friend – that you mean it no harm.

Look up. Find limbs that have aged out. It is winter. Can you tell which ones have simply lost their leaves, and which limbs are no longer living parts of the tree? Look at the bark on the limb. Is it peeling? Look for smaller sub-branches. Have they already broken off? Can you see decay or hollows made by woodpeckers, insects or other animals?

I feel the call…

This week I can answer. It is going to be cold ... super cold for Michigan. Sub-zero cold. Just the way I like it in the Treehouse. Conditions where it is not just the beauty of winter, it is the power.

I hear Mother Nature speak, “I am going to do something that humans cannot. This week I’ll

freeze the entire Great Lakes region.” Then she asks, “What do you think, Dan?”

I open my eyes and answer in my mind, “Show us. Bring it on! I love to feel your power. Pictures don’t tell the whole story. Show us one more time!”

It’s snowing again (Photo 1). But when the serious cold hits, it will be too cold to snow. 

Permit me to bring you another teaser from FOREST LEGEND: THE TALE OF OL’ SPLIT TOE,

an adventure that sweeps through time to tell the story of Michigan’s ecological change from the Ice Age into the future through the eyes of nature… a time-traveling deer – Ol’ Split Toe, who is on an amazing quest to understand the intricate inner workings of the forest and how humans fit in. Preview snippet 17 of 27 (Photo 2). Enjoy!

I wish you a pleasant spot in sub-zero cold, and the courage to step outside and feel its power.

Until next time, 

Dan

Excerpt from Chapter 21

AD 1950 - As he stood at the foundation, Split Toe heard something disturbing. It was the sound of machinery. Much louder than the gentle putt-putting of a Model T Ford.

The new owner thought of cutting all the trees off the property again. Some were nearly large enough to harvest. But he came up with a different plan that was more lucrative. He understood how things worked in his community and knew that to improve some of the main roads—to make them two-lanes and able to handle new, high-speed automobiles, trucks, and agricultural equipment—the community needed sand and gravel. He dug around on the back side of the bluff, knowing there was plenty of sand that drifted there thousands of years ago. When he dug deeper, he found traces of gravel, just as Jake had found at the lowest part of the basement.

“John,” Split Toe heard the owner talking over the noise of the equipment to a man sitting on a machine, “We’re gonna need a road that circles around the back side of this here hill so we can take trucks up from the bottom. We need the trees cut and the stumps pushed out of the way. No need to burn the small stuff, just push it into a pile with the stumps. Move the hardwood logs to the top by the road. We can do something with those.”

“That’ll take a bit of doin’,” John shouted over the machine’s noise. “But I’ll work it out.”

Copyright @ 2026 by Daniel S. Ellens

Pre-order now on Amazon – hardcover, paperback, eBook, and Audiobook

Publication Date: March 31, 2026

Praise for FOREST LEGEND:

“In this wise, deeply moving modern legend, a majestic deer is chosen by the spirits to travel across time while staying in place—his birthplace, one small corner of Michigan—and to witness the ceaseless changes on Earth by glacier, fire, flood, plants and animal, ever more clever and numerous humans, and Mother Nature’s unhurried, even-handed remediation. Spanning time from the end of the Ice Age to the climax of the Industrial Age, Forest Legend, a story for all ages, brings to vivid life the question on which our survival hangs: Can humans ever conquer and replace nature? Should we even try? Can we relearn that we are a part of her, and corral our technological powers within the reverence and respect of our Indigenous ancestors?”

– Annie Gottlieb, author of Do You Believe in Magic?, co-author of Wishcraft and The Cube, critic and commentator in The New York Times, O the Oprah Magazine, VOGUE, The Nation.