Unto every man the creator gives 100 blissful days.

It is a sin not to celebrate each and every one.

–Alekos, A Brief Candle, Stargate SG-1

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On a weekend in mid-May, I lay awake under a tarp as the rain fell around me and the lightning illuminated my surroundings with quick bursts of light. What I could see around me were lime green leaves that had newly sprouted. This was early for the area and I didn’t expect the leaves to sprout for another week or two. But it appeared summer had caught me by surprise, green leaves, thunderstorms, and all.

As I’ve written before in this series, the fast green up of trees in Northern Michigan is deceptive. In a little more than a week, the woods transforms from brown, grey, and drab to a wall of green that, in many places, will restrict your vision to a few yards. However, the preparations for this week had begun in late February and early March when the forests were still cold and covered with snow and ice. The trees began transporting nutrients to their branches and buds began growing. And then, with all preparations complete, the leaves spring forth as if there is no time to lose. Because, really, there is no time to lose.

In many ways, the sprouting leaves of late spring remind me of the beginnings of a great military campaign. As Russia prepared to invade Ukraine back in 2022, the U.S. government decided to inform us of intelligence surrounding Russia’s military preparations: hidden troop movements, transportation of ammunition stores, stockpiling of blood and medical supplies. Normally, these actions would have been hidden from most observers until the attack began. And when the attack does begin, it is swift and brutal. The exact point of these military preparations is to ensure that when the attack begins everything can occur as swiftly and decisively as possible. Such it is with the sprouting of leaves in late spring. Because the trees know that they will have less than five months to produce all the food they require for the entire year.

Summer in Michigan also reminds me of one of my favorite Stargate episodes: “Brief Candle.” In this episode, the team visits a planet called Argos where everyone celebrates, feasts, and parties with great joy and excess every single day. It isn’t long before they discover why. On this planet, humans age and die in 100 days. When the team leader contracts the same condition and begins aging rapidly, he reacts in disdain and becomes extremely bitter. Throughout the episode, his attitude is contrasted to the joy of the inhabitants. Like the inhabitants of Argos, the plants and animals of Michigan will live the next 100 days to the fullest. For some plants and insects, these will be the only days they get. For the others, they will live these days as if their survival to next year depends on them.

While the trees generally don’t green up until late May, other plants sprout before then. This year there was a large area of public land that was managed with a controlled burn where the government burns dead grasses. What happened next was predictable, but still amazed me. The resulting vegetation was so green you’d think they invented a new color. Whenever I drove past this opening, every few hundred yards deer darted back and forth across the road as they engaged in a feeding frenzy on the young nutritious plants. It reminded me of the documentaries from the Amazon River where someone puts meat in the river and uses an underwater camera to video the feeding piranhas.

Soon these deer started dissappearing one by one. In other cases, I’d see a group of young deer herded up nervously while it seems their matriarchs were missing. It’s not just the plants that experience budding and rebirth in the spring, but most animals as well. As May progresses, pregnant adult does separate themselves from the herd and find a private spot to hide their newborn fawns. Fawns are extremely vulnerable to predation in their first few days of life. Deer have developed a few strategies to overcome this vulnerability. For starters, most of the fawns will be born in a short period of time. Similar to first world war soldiers rushing across no-man’s land all at once, the intent here is to overload the predators’ ability to get all of them in the short time the young deer are vulnerable. Further, the does will keep each fawn in a hiding spot and only visit as necessary for nursing. This will make the fawns hard to find. During almost each walk down the trail this time of year, I will see adult does crashing noisily trough the woods attempting to lead me away from where her fawns are hidden.

Similarly, on the morning after I was stormed on under my tarp (as I described earlier), the weather cleared and I could hear the drumming of male ruffed grouse as they beat their wings attempting to attract their mates. For the woodcock, on the other hand, the time of mating had already past as these birds are early nesters. As I left my campsite and walked down the trail, I saw a gravely injured hen woodcock dragging her wing and leg apparently close to death. I’ll name this hen Juliet, and she was actually only injured as far as my dog was concerned. She must have had her nest nearby and these birds feign injury to draw dogs away from their nests. Had I turned my dog loose, she would have flown a couple yards away and repeated the performance before flying a few yards further and further. It amazes me that by pure instinct these birds have not only devised these elaborate death peformances to trick predators but can execute them more convincingly than a skilled stage actress as Juliet breathing her last beside her Romeo.

Also around May, many other birds arrive back north in Michigan and start making their own plans to find mates, build nests, and raise their young. Amongst these are the loons. These loons tend to claim entire lakes to themselves, and like any neighbor who thinks he owns the neighborhood, they aren’t quiet about it. During May and June, the call of loons punctuates the night around my cabin echoing far past the shores of the lakes they call home. I’ve always thought that the call of the loons is a harbinger for summer, when the noise and racket of human loons will descend upon the lakes up north. And just like the forests, the lakes and rivers are coming to life. Underwater plants start growing and insects of all kinds begin emerging. Many of these insects live but a short time in their adult form, just long enough to mate, lay eggs, and finish their lifecycle. Anglers will be found everywhere upon the waterways as these insects hatch hoping to trick one of the feeding fish into swallowing their fishing fly or lure. I appreciate these anglers as they are almost always quieter than the throngs of tourists that will arrive soon after.

At last, I’d like to mention my trip to visit my family in the agricultural lands of southern Michigan where I was raised. As I drove country roads amongst fertile farm fields in mid-June, I was surrounded by green just the same as the forests further north: alfalfa, soy beans, and corn punctuated by woodlots and treelines filled with mature deciduous trees. Deer fed everywhere, as the rising deer population has impacted most of the Lower Peninsula. I’ve read that apparently a family can feed itself on a couple acres of land, even without eating the deer. As I looked upon miles of green fields I wondered how many thousands of families will be fed one more year just from what I saw and from the livestock that would eat it. I marveled at the great reoccurring wealth before me. As a child, I really cared about everything that is still in the news—the bombings, the protests, the budget bills, the politicians. What I didn’t fully appreciate is the predictable victory of spring farm fields, the scent of summer corn that fades from my nose soon after I arrive, and the inherent peace of rural Michigan.

Reading back over this essay, it appears my words are true to what I am trying to describe. Late spring and early summer will attempt to list too many things to mention and build in transitions almost too quick to catch. Yet it will all be over after a few short pages. Today we tend to take for granted the lands of Michigan and the rural Midwest, but late spring and early summer are the best times to understand why we shouldn’t. At one time, many, many groups of people wanted this land. Many fought fierce battles and countless gave their lives to have it. Why was that? Because they knew it would bring them great prosperity. Not just this year. Not just the next. But every year for them and their descendants, they would walk out in June and see that their entire world had turned green again.