Returning Home
Greetings from northwest Missouri, and happy 2025!
I’ve only recently become aware of the fact that there is no way to turn off international paid subscriptions on Substack, and whether or not it was intended as some sort of scam, a “reader” from Slovakia subscribed to my blog for $5 and then immediately unsubscribed, and I couldn’t figure out why someone would do that. Turns out (according to Stripe, Substack’s payment processor), even just one $5 transaction makes one legally responsible for paying taxes in Slovakia.
Fortunately (?), I have only one paid subscriber here and three on the Love Dogs stack, but I’d like to humbly request that if you do wish to financially support my writing (or my photography, or my filmmaking, or any of my creative endeavors), which is very much appreciated, that you please do so via Patreon instead of Substack. It’s simply far more friendly to small-time independent artists like myself (taking out and remitting sales tax and VAT for creators instead of leaving us to fend for ourselves), and I’ll actually be turning off paid subscriptions on both of my Substack blogs until Substack provides its writers with more control over paid subscriptions and/or more tools to help us comply with international tax laws.
New YouTube Channel: Ambient Nature Films
After almost three months of transmission woes and a horrible experience with a shop that damaged my van from improper lifting, denied it and tried to gaslight me by suggesting I just hadn’t noticed the damage before, and left me with a [third] transmission that leaks fluid, I finally feel like I can put that saga behind me. I took the van to a shop here in Missouri last week and was told that the transmission was overfilled with fluid (by the shop in Lubbock), which is possibly the cause of the current slow leak at the neutral safety switch on the transmission pan, but things otherwise look fine. The whole experience (three transmissions in as many months, damage to the van, a horrible lack of communication with mechanics, nearly three months displaced, etc.) was exhausting and maddening and costly, and not only was I stressed to the max, but I managed to get Covid for the first time, give it to my brother who came to Lubbock to support the dogs and me at the end of this crisis, and then bring it to my parents despite staying in the van once arriving here and trying very hard not to give it to them. The whole family was down for the count on Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
We’re all fine now, thankfully, and I started off the new year savoring the quiet and calm surroundings of my homeland. I created a second YouTube channel, dedicated solely to the making of ambient nature films, and I can’t fully articulate how “whole” it makes me feel to just go outside and quietly create. Alone. Without the countless distractions of the modern manmade world. Without feeling the need to speak. Or be in front of a camera. Or entertain. Just pure connection to place, and creating from that place of connection. I long for this simplicity often, in a kind of way that aches deep in my bones. That’s the only reason I know to give when people ask me why I’m doing what I’m doing.
At any rate, I have two short ambient films on the second YouTube channel right now. I bought a Sennheiser MKE 440 on-camera stereo shotgun mic specifically for that channel’s work (though the two current films predate the purchase of that mic, so the audio is somewhere between ‘eek’ and ‘meh’). I’m excited to delve into learning how to record high quality ambient nature sounds while also working toward more creative compositions and better color grading skills. Even the most simple kind of filmmaking that I’m doing presents its own set of unique challenges, and I’m absolutely loving this new-to-me creative process.
Of course there are the ridiculously simple challenges, like remembering to turn ON the mic. The still photo below was a screen grab from the first time I recorded my ‘channel update’ video. I’m unaccustomed to using a mic that has its own internal power source, so I plugged the cable into the camera and just started filming. It wasn’t until after I’d filmed a roughly 16-minute segment that I realized the mic wasn’t on. Rookie mistake. One that I’d like to say won’t happen again; however, it did happen again. Just yesterday. I often tell others that I’m the type of person who has to learn things the hard way. Case in point.
But as I was sitting here watching my accidental silent film, I realized something special about what I was seeing.
These are my woods. These trees are my family. This bluff is sacred ground. This is my home. This is why I am who I am.
Geographically, it felt bigger when I was a kid. Like I might disappear if I wandered too far into the woods. Even now, while I know the physical boundaries of this place quite well, it’s hard not to feel a sense of disappearing into something immense and beautiful. I suspect it’s similar to what happens when we die. Like the return of one small piece of the universe to the whole. Like returning home.
Until next time….take care, dear friends.
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