For Isaiah
It started as an improvised recovery trip and became a five-year record of one. These are the chapters — written as we traveled, but then also reflected upon since.
How to read this
Each chapter below pulls from one of the journal entries written along the way. They’re short on purpose — if a moment catches you, follow the link to the full post. The journey was never planned; the writing wasn’t either. The 2016 posts didn’t know what was coming. The 2020 and 2021 posts know exactly what came.
At a glance
May 2016
Kin pulls the kid out of a crashed treatment plan. They land at Hallelujah Junction and start digging for quartz crystals on Peterson Mountain. A Phantom 3 drone gets bought in Reno.
June–August 2016
Big Tree Loop, Babyfoot, Diamond Creek, Kerby Peak, Manny’s grave, Strawberry Hill, Crater Lake, the Painted Hills, Tamolitch. Hike, fly, write, repeat.
May 25, 2020
The call comes. Kin writes the longest post on this site — A Drone Recovery Post to Remember the Kid — and assembles a set of Isaiah’s photos.
July 5, 2021
Isaiah’s ashes are spread at Strawberry Hill on the Oregon coast, where his father’s ashes also rest.
Chapter 1 · May 2016
“We rented a truck and headed into the mountains out of Los Angeles. We spent a few nights ‘adjusting’ in hotels along the way, where he had his own room, taking things slow.”
The plan was held together by exhaustion and instinct. Yosemite, then north on back roads, then Reno, then a turn-off marked Hallelujah Junction where you can dig for quartz crystals in the dirt.
Chapter 2 · May 2016
“He talked to me occasionally, and he didn’t have a ‘fuck it all’ look on his face. He was just in the moment. Hands in the dirt.”
Up on Peterson Mountain the kid spent his first quiet hours in months — scraping cool dirt under beach umbrellas, occasionally finding a piece of muddy crystal, the wall between us coming down a little at a time.
Chapter 3 · June 2016
“At the top of Kerby Peak we felt very much like the rocks up there — broken and worn. ... It was the first time the kid saw the benefit of the physical exercise involved with what we were doing, and the benefits of breaking ones self so that you can come out the other side stronger.”
Kerby Peak was the high point of the summer, literally and figuratively — and the source of the most stunning drone shot Isaiah ever framed.
Chapter 4 · June 2016
“After about two days along the creek, swimming, and sitting around a fire, ... the kid asked if we could stay longer. He had never asked for anything.”
Diamond Creek is sixty miles into the burn, down a road the kid kept calling “a road?” It’s also where the kid talked the most — around the campfire, about when he first started using, about how he saw himself in the world.
Chapter 5 · June 2016
“I made him sit while I shaped a heart of crystals from those we had dug up at Peterson Mountain in the center of the grave and tell the kid the story of how I killed my best friend.”
Manny died in 1997. His death is part of why Kin came out of his own addiction when he did, and part of why he tried so hard with the kid.
Interlude
Photos of Isaiah from that summer — mostly snuck, occasionally permitted. The full set lives in “The Kid”.
Chapter 6 · May 25, 2020
“We received a call recently letting us know that we had lost the kid. He left this world. We were unable to fully recover this drone.”
Isaiah died of an overdose. Kin wrote the longest entry on the site — part remembrance, part anger at the opiate epidemic, part honest accounting of what the summer was and wasn’t.
I don’t think the kid wanted to die. I just think he had been dealt the shittiest of hands, had his entire existence crushed at the age of 12, just as he was beginning his journey into manhood, and he couldn’t ever figure out how to actually live. — A Drone Recovery Post to Remember the Kid, 2020
Chapter 7 · July 5, 2021
“She was very emotional as she walked your ashes down to the beach, but she also did so with such confidence and purpose — clearly she had done this before.”
Strawberry Hill on the Oregon coast is where Isaiah’s father’s ashes were spread, and where Audrey carried Isaiah’s. The ball of pain Kin used to see when he closed his eyes and thought of the kid is gone.
A note
The journal stays here because the journey isn’t finished. Drone Recovery was always going to be ongoing — you don’t graduate from it, you just keep landing the drone and taking off again. If you’re reading this because you’re out on your own trail right now, take what helps and leave the rest.