Planning A Movie

I've been sitting here all day thinking about how I want to approach the upcoming Digital Story Product that I have to do for this class. Having the topic of hunting already picked out, I am now forced to start entering the dirty work and the fine details. What types of things am I going to address in the video? How do I want it to look and sound? Because this subject is really important to me, I don't want to leave anything out or have this movie be a flop and not get my points across. Taking out a piece of paper, I started to map it all out. Movie-making methods and editing techniques aside, what did I want to include in the video? Ultimately, it comes down to four things: What hunting means to me, memories I have associated with it, the process and gear required, and the morality of the entire thing.

The first point, and probably most important to me, is definitely the most complex and the one I want to focus on throughout the piece. What is hunting to me? It's many things. It is a time to be close to the outdoors. You trek out into the darkness of early morning, plop yourself down among the trees, bugs, and fallen foliage. While the chill creeps into your bones from the temperature around you, you start out completely blind until the sun rises. All you can do is listen. You hear the scurrying of small animals and the buzzing of mosquitoes in your ear. You can hear the wind rustling through the leaves. Once the sun comes up, and everything is washed with light, you wait silently, and the only thing to do is look and listen. The spider in the grass across from you spins its web and you watch its progress throughout the day. The squirrels play with each other and scatter through the leaves and up the trees. You sit and see all the natural world around you, noticing things you would probably miss if you were just passing through. Hunting is a family tradition for me. My great grandparents and grandparents hunted, and I learned from my dad everything that they taught him. So much more knowledge than people realize goes into hunting. You learn about the gear you will need, the gear you should bring for emergencies, how to (properly) read a compass, to use and carry a weapon, how to track deer, and many more things. My favorite thing about hunting, however, is spending time with my dad. Obviously, hunting is also a source of food for my family, and I always look forward to my dad's delicious jerky.

I have so many memories revolving around being in the woods with my dad. This blog post would probably get pretty lengthy to tell them all, or even a few. I also want to save them to talk about them in my project. However, the other two things that I want to talk about in the movie are the process of hunting and the morality of it. There are bad hunters and good hunters. They are easily identified by the way they treat the sport, nature, other hunters, and the weapons they hold. I hope that when making this video, I can show people the difference. Some people will always be against hunting, but I am hoping I can at least get them to look at it a little differently.

Camp Linden

The crunching of gravel beneath the tires of the truck echoed as we pulled into the parking lot of the camp. It had only taken us maybe five minutes or less to drive here. I never knew that their were camping grounds practically in my backyard. Camp Linden is nestled between the woods and rivers in Deerfield Township, Michigan. It is a camp dedicated to the Girl Scouts of America and they have various programs throughout the year, although they have considerably less during the winter. My troop visited Camp Linden many times while I has a Girl Scout, but my first time there was for the Daddy-Daughter weekend that the camp called "My Guy and I". After checking in, we were told which campsite we would be staying in ("Holy Oaks") and which path to start on in order to follow signs all the way there. We passed the main dining hall, Hunter Lodge, and the sports field. We walked across the Donkey Bridge, a low, winding, wooden path along the wet marshes along the lake. Finally, at the top of the hill, we reached our campsite. Wooden platforms with canvas' forming tents above them lined the main path through the site. Eat tent contained four to six uncomfortable beds with mosquito nets draped over top of them. The site had its own water pump, latrine, and campfire pit.

I have a lot of fond memories of Camp Linden, especially the times I would go to spend time with my dad. I remember the campfire songs we would learn, the crafts that would be taking place all over the camp that we attended, and the people we would meet. I remember making the walk all the way to the infamous Monkey Bridge, a thin walkway that arched over a fast-paced river way in the back of the camp, so many people never saw it. The first time we went there, we passed an old Red Oak tree that was so big, we couldn't touch each others fingers if we both wrapped our arms around it. When we finally reached the bridge, we saw a Blue Racer snake eat a Blue Gill whole. I stared in awe as the snake's mouth go wider and wider just so he could swallow the fish. Reaching the back border of the camp, we reached a road and realized that it ran right by our house. We really were close to home. On our trek back through the forest of tall pines, we heard some snapping, and turned just into time to see a tree fall over for no apparent reason. It's something my dad and I still talk about sometimes.

I still have some of the memorabilia from my time at Camp Linden with my dad. One time, we made recycled paper out of old newspapers. Another time, we folded sheets of copper into a cylinder, and punched out words and shapes into the metal. After places a candle inside, the words and shapes would be projected onto the walls. Spending time at Camp Linden was just another way that I grew up in and around nature. It is probably one of the many reasons why nature is a big part of my life and where I feel the most comfortable.

The Rumbling Monster of Death

The air was crisp and the wind felt food on my cheek as I step outside and made my way to my car. My sister needed her to run her into town about fifteen minutes away to meet up with a friend. We had only been in the car a minute, cruising down the dirt road lined with trees starting to fade into fall colors, when I saw something small in the road. At first, I thought it was a decent sized rock. However, in the split second before it slipped between my tires, I realized it was a beautiful woodpecker. My mouth, along with my sister's, dropped open as we heard a clunk beneath the car and I frowned. I was immediately filled with guilt and with I could go back to avoid any contact with the innocent little bird that was minding its own business in the middle of a death strip. Glancing in my rear view mirror, I was horrified to see the wings of the bird flapping about as its body undergoing a spasm in the road. I frowned even more. My sister was in a hurry, so I didn't have time to turn around.

On my way back home, I pulled my car over to the side of the road next to where I had injured the bird. I put on my hazard lights even though the probability of someone driving by was slim out where I live. Walking out onto the dirt, I found its small body. Its black feathers were speckled with white spots and its red-feathered neck was bright. I was glad it was laying still. When driving back, I had been mentally preparing myself for if I needed to put the bird out of its misery. It might seem over the top to care or go back for such a small animal. There are an access of birds everywhere. But, the thought of the animal suffering and slowly dying in the road was something I didn't want to happen if I could avoid it. It wasn't suffering anymore. I gently scooted its body out of the road so it wouldn't get mutilated any further, then walked back to my car. So many animals die from cars all the time, probably even more than we realize when we are paying attention or they are too small to see while we are driving. Not only do I emit harmful fumes into nature's clean air when I drive my car, but I also sometimes kill its' creatures.

Building With Barnwood

Ever since reading "All This And Heaven, Too" from Looking for Hickories by Tom Springer, I've been thinking about my own barn legacy. Before my parents bought the land where my house now stands, our property and all the surrounding neighbor's properties were one piece of farmland. When the owner decided to sell it, they sectioned it off into smaller pieces of property, one of which my parents bought. There were two kinds of land they had purchased; half of the property was a field while the other half was covered in a small section of woods. Among the trees were two barns and a smaller shed. By the time I was born, the only thing left standing, and that is still standing, is the smaller shed. Everything else had rotted and collapsed, littering the woods with barn wood.  However, my parents salvaged some of the wood and used it in our home.

In several places in the kitchen and living room, the barn wood serves as a decorative trim. Two strong, barn wood beams travel from one wall to another along the ceiling. Resting on top of them are various vintage decorations and antiques.

The biggest accent of all is the basement wall that is completely lined and accented with barn wood, complete with two barn wood pillars.

Various tools and antiques decorate the wall along with the saw blades that my mom painted with picturesque scenery of farmland. One shows a snow covered barn standing beside two silos, guarding by a strong, wood fence. The second shows a small wood house nestled among a prairie, the owners clothes hung out to dry.

I have always acknowledged the barn wood decor of the house as something unique, but I've been thinking about it even more. The barns' legacy lives on in my own home, even if we didn't use the barns for their original purpose. Who had the barns before? What had been in them? I may not know the answer to these questions, but, in a way, the barns have become immortalized within my house.

The Lakes of My Life

Despite living in Michigan, I didn't really grow up on a lake. My home is located not too far from some residential lakes, but I have never lived on one. Growing up, my family had a blue and white fishing boat. Every spring, my parents, sister, and I would pull the boat into our front yard and beginning prepping it for use. We would pull off its winter cover and start by removing the fall leaves that had somehow managed to slip their way under the cover along with presents left by our neighbor's cats. While my dad hooked up the motor to the hose and made sure it was in working order, my mom, sister, and I would scrub off the outside, making it look good for a whole summer's use. Even though I loved taking the boat out to the nearest public lake (about ten minutes away), it always seemed a very stressful task to get it in and out of the water. But, once we were in, we were able to cruise around. If my whole family was on the boat, we would explore the channels and just enjoy the lake. My favorite channel had tree roots growing down into the water on one side while the other side had houses lining the bank. One of the people living there had placed fake (yet surprisingly realistic looking) alligators along the roots of the trees. I've seen people get startled over them more than once. If it was just my dad and me in the boat, that meant we were going fishing. I was never patient enough to cast my line far out and wait. Whenever my dad wasn't looking, I would dip my hooked worm into the schools of tiny blue gills swirling around out boat "Look, I caught one!" Some years passed when we wouldn't take the boat out at all and eventually, my dad sold it.

The Great Lake that I have spent the most time on is Lake Huron. My cousin's grandparents have a beach front cottage in a town known as Caseville (most well-known for their Cheeseburger in Paradise festival). When people ask me where it is, I just point to the tip of my thumb. Every time I go there and walk along the beach, I feel like I'm walking along an ocean. The soft waves are wonderful to fall asleep to and the soft sand is perfect for taking strolls. When I came to Grand Valley, everyone seemed to know so much about Lake Michigan. But, my Great Lake is Huron.

New Arrivals

I still have some bits of memory from my second grade field trip to the Home Depot. We were given small orange aprons to wear and we were showed around by one of the workers. Having grown up with it, I loved the smell of saw dust in the air. After the tour, we were taken back to a workshop where we were each given pre-cut pieces and were helped in creating our own birdhouses. It had a simple design of a long box with a roof placed over the top, a whole in the front with a small perch, and a gap of open space under the roof for another entry point. Once I brought the small birdhouse home, my mom and I painted it. I panted the box bright yellow with green grass along the bottom, a flower around the perch, and lady bugs scattered across it. The roof was painted blue and we took cotton balls, dipped them in white paint, and then used them as sponges to create clouds to simulate a sky. My dad hung it outside for me outside one of our kitchen windows and I eagerly awaited when birds would make my creation their home.

Years passed and no birds came. Every spring we would hang the house up on its designated hook and every winter it would come down and be stored away after having been empty the whole time it was hanging up. It took more than a few years for birds to make my birdhouse their home. I figured that the house was too small for any bird to want to live there. One day, I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my family when I noticed movement outside the window. I rushed to the window, trying to peer into the little birdhouse, but I couldn't see anything but darkness. But, there was a tiny, brown bird sitting on top of the sky-painted roof, a twig in its beak. I watched it fly down and scuttle into the house through the side slots under the roof and add to what was its new nest. I watched the birds everyday and, soon enough, there was twigs poking out of the house on both sides. My dad told me the birds were called Wrens. Ever since then, the Wrens come back every year and sometimes, if the light shines into the house just right, I can see the movement of baby birds inside. When I sit at the table, I listen to them sing and I have their songs memorized. I feel happy that birds are living in the house I made and I'm even more happy that I get to see them come back year after year.

The Middle of Nowhere is Somewhere to Me

Every time I have had a person come over to my house they make some sort of comment about me living "in the middle of nowhere" or "the boonies." What they don't realize is my house is in the middle of everywhere.

My mailing address is a small town called Linden, located on the southeast side of Michigan. When I tell people at Grand Valley I am from the east side of the state, everyone just generally assumes I am from somewhere close to Detroit. In actuality, I think I have only been in or even near Detroit two or three times in my life. Even if I say I am from Linden, I don't really think of Linden as being my home town. It is about a fifteen minute drive to a town in any direction from my house. My home is the focal point for five different towns: Linden, Fenton, Brighton, Hartland, and Howell. Growing up, I feel as though I have spent an equal amount of time in each of the five towns; so, my home town is really all five of them.

I never really feel completely relaxed and at home until I am driving on dirt roads after my two hour drive from GV. Trees form dense woods along both sides of the road, only broken apart by the occasional gravel driveway and cornfield. Everything is colorful and cement is no where to be found. In the spring, the green starts to unfold from the branches of the trees around my house and small blossoms of white and pink speckle the large apple tree in my front yard. Summer brings the darker greens and bright blue of the sky and the pool off the back deck. Fall is my favorite because sweatshirts are one of my favorite things to wear while I smell the crisp air and the leaves turn yellow and orange.  Even winter can be beautiful, especially after an ice storm when every small twig and branch is coated with ice and the woods seem to be reflective. I would never want to live anywhere else than the middle of somewhere close to dirt roads and trees in every direction.