By: Charity Meier | Novi Note | Published September 18, 2025
NOVI — For some, a fallen tree might be a nuisance, an eyesore or a trip hazard, but for residents on Endwell Street, near Pavilion Shore Park in Novi, it provided a way to get to know their neighbors.
Danny Miles and his three children, Trek, 11, Andrew, 9, and Easton, 6, recently moved to Novi from Santa Barbara, California. There, his children developed a passion for the outdoors and attended classes and camps on wilderness training. When they saw a tree had fallen at the park behind their home, they immediately saw an opportunity to build a tree fort.
“It was my kids. There was just a fallen tree, not a huge deal, but it fell near the park, and they kind of shut everything down,” Miles said. “We’re from Santa Barbara in California, and my kids were all outdoors-based. They were homeschoolers and went to outdoor school for a long time. And we kind of took the tree, and my kids made an entire fort, and it kind of brought everyone in the neighborhood around, and it was a really fun thing for them.”
Miles said the tree appeared to have been rotting and fell as a result of some strong winds on Sept. 5. He said he checked out the tree prior to the kids starting to build the fort and determined that it was safe for them to proceed.
“There could be a couple parents sitting around going, ‘Oh no, this is dangerous, it’s a fallen tree,’ but the reality is it’s no more dangerous than anything else, and we thoroughly checked it out. It’s just an opportunity for them to be creative, and to me that’s better than being on a video game all day,” Miles said.
The children started with little hand saws, taking off limbs, and built the fort over a two-day period, and then they had an entire day to play in it before the city cleared away the fort and other debris from the tree. The kids constructed the entire fort.
The fort ended up being 5 feet high, 15 feet long and 10 feet wide.
“We just wove them together,” Andrew said of how they connected the pieces of the fort. “It was easier with the vines though.”
“It’s fun to be in nature and running around and climbing,” Trek said.
Miles said that his kids have built forts from fallen trees before. He said they used to have a cabin in the Sierra Valley, and the kids attended wilderness school there. He said wherever a tree fell in the valley, the kids would construct a fort out of it, and that would be where class was held for the next couple of days.
Trek said that if kids want to learn how to build their own fort, they should go to outdoor school like they did. He said it is fun to build forts because after it’s done, you can hang out inside it.
When asked by the Novi Note if they would like to see more kinds playing outside, the answer was a resounding “yes” from all three boys.
“It’s kind of neat, my kids being outdoors their whole lives, we are in kind of a new world from their old lives, but I try to keep them outside as much as possible, so fun kind of comes from situations like this,” Miles said.
He said not only did the fallen tree provide his children with hours of fun, but also a way to get to know other children in the neighborhood.
“It’s been harder for them to make friends here, just being completely outdoor-based; every kid they’ve met here has been pretty obsessed with video games, and I’m not trying to discourage that, but it’s a different world than how they grew up,” Miles said.
He said that the fallen tree provided a way for other parents in the neighborhood to get their kids outside and introduce them to a different way of life.
“I mean, they just loved it,” Miles said of his neighbors and their kids.