Michigan Forest Life - March 8, 2026

Greetings friends,

The sun is out in Michigan again, and with it a bit of spring warmth. It is a spring teaser. I was in the forest at Winterfield Pines Nature Sanctuary only briefly this week. Just long enough to exchange sap reservoirs for my maple taps.  I am always surprised at the difference in sap production from different trees. My taps are forty feet apart, with both trees having similar sun exposure. Both trees are on the edge of a meadow.  The south tree had a full reservoir when I arrived. The north tree’s reservoir was only half full. In the fall, the south tree is also the first to change to its brilliant orange color. The north tree trails it by two weeks. Perhaps someone understands the mechanisms at work that result in these differences. To me, it is a mystery – a wonder. It is evidence of the fact that even things that seem extraordinarily simple in nature are actually quite complex. Or, perhaps, it is an inability to pinpoint cause and effect that makes a process that actually IS quite simple, seem unimaginably complex within the human mind.

This weekend, though in Salem again, I was transported to the forest with two of my

grandchildren, who stayed with me while their parents traveled. We had errands to run and projects to complete (Photo 1, 2). And each day I read to them aloud a few more chapters of FOREST LEGEND: THE TALE OF OL’ SPLIT TOE. When we started, they had already read as far as the time travel from the Ice Age to the logging era. They finally had the answer to a question I asked them to look out for when I first left them with a book, “What happened to the flea?”  This weekend we picked up at the logging era and read into modern times (Chapters 9-32). 180 pages of reading and listening.  Every idle moment they wanted another chapter and sat on the edge of their seats as we went. I gave them enticing questions along the way. “What happened to the dog? What happened to Edra? What happened to Split Toe?” We traveled through forests destroyed and forests reborn. We considered humans’ place in the natural order of things. Two chapters still to go. I will leave that to them. FOREST LEGEND does transport you to the forest.

Permit me to include Preview Snippet 24 of 27 of FOREST LEGEND: THE TALE OF OL’ SPLIT TOE (Photo 3). I am happy to say that the book comes out this month, Publication Date:

March 31, 2026. It has been a long wait!

I wish you a day of sunshine, and some quality reading time.

Until next time,

Dan

Excerpt from Chapter 29

AD 2020 - From his kitchen window half a mile west of the spot where the large herd of deer were grazing, a descendant of Angus and Grace sat in the farmhouse with a pair of field glasses, counting the deer as they popped into the field.

“Thirty-four. Thirty-five. Thirty-six…. Boy, that’s a big one. Hannah, come and look at this big buck.” He saw Split Toe take his place in the group.

The farmer could see the buck’s antlers with his naked eyes at half a mile. That was indeed a big deer.

“Hannah! You gotta see this.” The farmer would have to walk into the field the next day and have a look at the tracks.

“Forty-eight. Forty-nine…”

“Fifty-six. Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight,” the farmer tried to count them all. “Fifty-nine. Sixty. Sixty-one. Hannah, there are sixty-one deer in that south field right now,” he shouted across the house. “They’re gonna eat everything we have!”

Copyright @ 2026 by Daniel S. Ellens

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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”.