Nature

Michigan Needs a Mushroom License — And Deep Down, You Know It

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Every spring in Michigan, the forests erupt into a full-scale fungal gold rush. Pickup trucks jam two-tracks. Facebook groups trade morel coordinates like cartel smugglers swapping contraband routes. Grown adults crawl through the woods in camouflage carrying mesh bags full of mushrooms worth more per pound than some cuts of steak. And through all of it, the State of Michigan collects exactly zero dollars from one of the largest seasonal harvest activities on public land.

Michigan: A Peaceful Place Built by Geological Violence

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Stand on the bank of the Au Sable River at sunrise and it’s all mist, pine trees, and trout quietly minding their business. Feels like the kind of place that’s always been this way—stable, predictable, friendly. It hasn’t. Michigan is what happens when the earth tries to tear itself apart, fails, gets buried, frozen, crushed, flooded, and then—only after all that—decides to look nice about it.

Three Knots, No Excuses: The Lost Skill That Still Saves Lives

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There was a time—not that long ago—when a man who couldn’t tie a knot was considered about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Today, we’ve got people carrying $1,200 smartphones, satellite GPS, and enough titanium gadgets clipped to their belt to look like a walking REI catalog… and they can’t tie a loop that won’t slip under load.

Aisle Six at Lake Martin: Conversations with a Mallard

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I like ducks. I watch the same two mallards visit this area of Lake Martin. Almost every morning.

I don’t know if they’re married. Ducks are seasonally monogamous. So this could just be a one-season stand.

Still, they are my friends. I guess they’re here to find food. Sort of like going to Piggly Wiggly with your spouse, minus the buggy, and the rolling of your spouse’s eyes whenever one of you places six jars of something you don’t need into the basket because it’s BOGO.

The Interface, the Code, and the War: Why Christianity Becomes Offensive

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Some of the sharpest minds of the last century sensed the reductionist story was missing something. Carl Jung looked inward and saw conflict. The ego — the conscious “I” — wants control, moral self-justification, narrative dominance. It insists on sovereignty. Jung recognized the ego was not the whole self and that something beyond it pressed inward, demanding humility and reordering. He called that pressure the “Self.” He diagnosed the tension correctly. He simply refused to name the external authority behind it.

Not Random, Not Accidental: Chuck Missler and the Case for an Engineered Reality

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When Missler said we may be living in something like a simulation, he meant that physical reality functions like a user interface. We experience the front end. The underlying code — the laws, constants, and constraints — operate beneath our direct perception. Just as you don’t see the binary code behind your screen but interact with its output, we interact with a physical world governed by informational architecture we didn’t write.

Acorns, Aggression, and Melanin: Why the Black Squirrels Run Northern Michigan

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If NATO ever needs a real-world case study in territorial conflict, dominance hierarchies, and cold-weather logistics, they can skip the war colleges and simply hang a bird feeder in northeastern Michigan. Within hours, it becomes a contested supply hub. Within days, a full-blown squirrel conflict emerges—predictable, ruthless, and strangely educational.

Loud Guitars, Sharp Broadheads: Why Ted Nugent Still Matters to Michigan Hunters

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There are rock stars… and then there are Michigan rock stars—the kind forged in cold air, hard miles, deer sign, and a stubborn refusal to apologize for loving the outdoors. Ted Nugent is that kind of animal.

A Modest Climate Change Proposal: Melt Michigan

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For decades, Democrats have run the greatest long con in meteorological history—keeping Michigan locked in a Siberian deep freeze under the guise of “saving the planet.” This is not environmentalism. This is a communist cold-storage program. A deliberate effort to stop the natural evolution of states—where Michigan obviously becomes Florida with better beer and fewer felonies.

The Otter’s Mom

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The Central California coast was covered in dense fog that clung to the world like a wet T-shirt. Morro Bay was gray and cold. The bay lies directly between Los Angeles and San Francisco. You’re looking at about 2,300 acres of Pacific tidal flats, marshes, and beaches, one of the few national estuaries in the …

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