Mid-to-late May is a magical time to step inside northern Michigan forests. The leaves on the hardwood trees have formed but are most likely not yet full-size. The forest is splendid, especially because the not yet fully-grown leaves leave more space for sunlight to reach the forest floor. May 22, 2020 was a picture-perfect day for my wife, Debbie, and me to hike the morning away on the Mt. Baldy Trail at one of the Mott conservancy trails along M-22 north of Arcadia. We observed many scattered trillium and other wild plants the first half-hour but when, after a couple of miles of hiking, we came upon this hillside covered with trilliums, I felt like I had entered a trillium dreamland. It was time for me to stop and try to find a picture-perfect spot to plant my tripod and make an image worthy of what I was seeing and feeling. My wife knows me. She knew this was going to take time. When I am blessed to find a scene like this, I know better than to rush; I want to make the best art I can, art that moves me and hopefully others. Debbie likes to keep moving so, as she often does, she hiked on, leaving me to catch her when I knew I was finished, knew I had made an image I felt good about. Thank you, Debbie, for putting up for years with my stop-and-go approach to hiking; I know it is not easy sometimes. We had already hiked several hundred miles together in 2020 before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In all that time, I never made a photograph that moved me like this one. Our reward that day was curbside-pickup takeout sandwiches and beer from Stormcloud Brewing Company in Frankfort, savored with a tailgate picnic at Frankfort beach.