Spring Mill, and the Meaning of Home

Shortly before turning 24, I decided to make good on a promise I’d made to myself at the summit of Mt. Pinatubo. I kept finding myself exposed to all of these naturally beautiful scenes, exploring all of these unique locales, and I wanted to share what I saw with my friends and family back home.

I’d never been a particularly good storyteller, so my words weren’t doing the things I saw justice. I’d tell someone what I’d seen, but my programmer brain kept describing it in such bland detail that I never saw the glistening reaction I was hoping for.

“Oh yes, the water was so blue! Practically #0000FF! Well, maybe a bit more like #0033FF. Yes, there was a bit of green, too.”

For some reason, that wasn’t going over so well.

“If only they could see what I saw,” I thought to myself, “then they’d be inspired to travel too!”

So I went out and got myself a nice camera as an early birthday present. And with Spring Mill State Park being nearby, it became my test bed.

The park has always had a special place in my life, so it made sense that it’d be where I wanted to start my photography. My father would often take me and my brothers hiking there. One year in particular, I must have been 10 or so, we’d gone the day before the new school year started. On the hiking trail we came across some mushrooms.

“They’re called fungi,” my dad explained to me.

“Fun…gi? I thought they’re mushrooms.”

“They are, but it’s a type of fungus. The plural is fungi.”

My dad always liked educating us on new words.

The next day, I was very nervous about starting school. I was worried no one would like me, that I wouldn’t fit in, and it made me reluctant to get in the car to start the new school year. My dad sat me down for a moment and told me, “remember those mushrooms we saw yesterday? You’re like them.”

“I’m a mushroom?” I asked, a bit confused.

“You’re a fun-gi…a fun guy!” he told me with a smile.

I don’t know if it was the bad pun or the compassionate care, but I felt warmth in my heart.

Learning to See

I didn’t want to just be any photographer, though. With the age of Facebook and Instagram coming around, everyone could snap some photos, and it seemed like everyone called themselves a photographer because of it. I wanted to be different. I guess I wanted to make sure people liked my photos.

Those photos you see of wispy waterfalls always made me think, “wow, now that’s a photographer!” So I started there. I researched how people were able to pull off such magical shots. As it turns out, it’s not so difficult.

The effect is accomplished by doing a long exposure. That is, rather than snapping a photo in a fraction of second, you leave the shutter open for a second or more. Easy, right?

I tried it out. Everything came out white. I was over exposing the image!

“What am I doing wrong here?”

I scoured the internet some more. “What’s this…neutral density filter?”

That’s the secret sauce to long exposures. It purposefully darkens the photo, letting in less light over time, allowing you to hold the shutter open for longer without over exposing the image.

With this new information in hand, and a cheap variable neutral density filter attached to my lens, I set out once again to Spring Mill to try it out. The first time I tried it out, and I saw the image show up on the camera’s display, I was amazed.

“I’ve done it!” I thought. “I’ll be on National Geographic’s frontpage in no time!”

I started posting them to Facebook. Still wanting to be different, I’d think up a new pun to accompany each photo. “I hope this long exposure isn’t too mainstream.”

While I never did end up on Nat Geo, and likely never will, I do feel I accomplished what I’d set out to do. People started to like my photos. Or at least they liked the puns. Which I now realize in my older years can be attributed back to my father. It’s just me, ever trying to be a fungi.

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Jet Lag, Nostalgia, and Home

A few months later, shortly before returning to the Philippines, I was determined to get some video clips of some of my favorite spots of Southern Indiana. I wanted to have something to look back on when the inevitable periods of homesickness were going to strike.

So I took a week off work and just drove around. Filming whatever scene happened to evoke a sense of “now that’s the Indiana I know.” I found myself darting between Spring Mill, Clifty Falls, Muscatatuck. And seemingly every country road in between got my senses tingling. There’s just something about those empty roads with corn fields on either side of you that softly whispers home to me.

When I arrived back in the Philippines, it wasn’t long before the homesickness settled in. I’d been in the states for a longer period than usual, and so returning back to the cramped Manila streets made me miss those corn fields even more. Jet lag didn’t help, always causing a bit of a mood slump to go along with the constant feeling of sleeplessness.

And so, one sleep Saturday morning in Manila, I sat in a coffee shop and decided to put together this video. Something I could watch during the mood slumps. Something I could show my Filipino friends and say, “that’s my home.” Something I could look back on in the future, wherever I might end up, and be reminded of where I came from.

Sure enough, even years later, it still evokes the same feelings.

That’s my home.