Drone Recovery · A Journal
In May 2016 we took Isaiah out of Los Angeles and into the mountains. All we had was a drone, a truck, and a half-formed idea about how to help him find his way back to the world. This is what we wrote along the way, and what we have written since.
What this is
Drone Recovery began in the front seat of a rental truck somewhere between Los Angeles and the Sierra Nevada. The kid had been kicked out of treatment and there wasn’t a plan beyond moving him away from the city. We bought a Phantom 3 in Reno, learned to fly it on Peterson Mountain, and pointed ourselves north through California into Oregon. The drone gave us something to do. The mountains did the rest.
The 2016 posts were written without knowing how the story would end. Isaiah left this world in May 2020. In July 2021 we spread his ashes at Strawberry Hill, where his father’s ashes also rest. The journal stays here for him, for his mother, and for anyone else still out on the trail.
For very brief moments I saw a kid who wasn’t angry, broken, and someone who didn’t want to die, but also didn’t quite know how to live. I saw a young man who just might make it through all of the shit life had thrown at him. — A Drone Recovery Post to Remember the Kid, 2020
Three ways in
From the journal
Strawberry Hill
Photos
Get Some Rest
Planning The Next Steps
Closing This Chapter of the Drone Recovery Story
Because of Badly Behaved Drone Operators