Lesson Learned from a Drone Crash
I made a mistake. I think it’s important to share my failures, as well as wins, to remember what has passed and what lessons I can take away from each experience. I can now see why history is so important to study. If we do not study history, it is bound to repeat itself. So after owning my drone, not even a few months, I crashed it. Woe is me.
Let me set the stage - it was my last week in Santa Fe. I had been visiting my mom there for two weeks. One of the weeks, Austin had been there as well. Although I was working for the two weeks, Austin had joined mostly for hiking. There are so many trails surrounding Santa Fe, New Mexico. There's no way that you could be there a week, or even a month, and hit all the trails.
So after Austin had driven back to Austin (the city) with Leo, and I had interviewed Anna, my mom's neighbour for a video. Anna worked at the Santa Fe weekly newspaper as the ad director. She shared her favourite coffee shop, her favourite tea shop, bookstores, and view of Santa Fe.
This view was towards the top of the ski hill. I had been there before, briefly, with my sister, but it had been snowing fairly heavily and we weren't actually there for the view. It was more like, this outlook would be picturesque, but it's too cold to stay here and wait for the sunset, so let's get the heck out of here.
So when I invited my mom and Ralph, they were ready. They knew exactly where Anna was talking about. Because I got off from work at 6:30p, and sunset was at 7:41p, it was more or less a race. The outlook was 30 minutes away from the house, but even still, we wanted to make sure that I had enough time to set up and get my drone up in the air to fly around over the mountain, going towards the setting sun.
Ralph must have been a NASCAR driver in another life. We raced up the mountain. The first snow had not yet fallen, being August, so the roads were not slick with ice yet. He got us to the top of that mountain in more than enough time to get some footage, as well as some delightful golden hour photos of Ralph and my mom.
And then I got out my drone. I set up the controller with my phone, and was not planning on flying it for a prolonged amount of time because I had not charged my phone enough throughout the day. Frankly, the entire two weeks it was a struggle to keep my phone charged enough as it was my primary camera. But I digress.
Pulled up right after us, in a car that had been close on our heels the entire drive up the mountain, were some youngsters. One of them commented on how cool it was that I had a drone, and asked me about the controller, and if I could see what my drone was seeing instantaneously. I answered, and then some. I mentioned how I was filming for my YouTube video. I think that with each video that I create, I become more and more proud of what I produce and how much I have grown. My mind wandered, it veered from my focus of flying the drone, and I have to admit that I was showing off. I wanted to do a fly over of the drone, without pushing it up much further.
And now my drone is high up in a tree at the Vista Grande Overlook on the Sangre de Cristo Mountain in Santa Fe. I flew it into a tree with an audience. And then, with said audience, I proceeded to climb the tree. Right foot, left foot, right hand, left hand - SPIDER! Spider? Or a tree branch shaped like a spider… Either way, I panicked. Branches broke, but my feet remained as steady as they were previously, which were quite shaky with every inch I climbed up, and my left hand remained steadfast. No falling for me. Ralph said I got about 25 feet up, and even being 25 feet up I was still unable to see the drone. I estimate that the drone actually crashed about 75 feet up.
I’m not even sure what the plan was… In order to bring the drone back down - had I reached it - I would have had to use one of my two hands to hold it. How then was I going to climb back down? With the sun setting, and if I was being honest with myself, if I had gone any further the only way I was going to come down was on a helicopter or a firefighter’s ladder.
One of the audience members, a great samaritan, had come up on the ridge that Ralph and I had climbed up to get access to the tree, so that he could guide us back down. He had come a different path than Ralph and I had climbed up, and said that although his path was steeper, it was also shorter and almost straight down. But that straight down path was essentially a dusty, dirt slide - and it was fun. More than that, I can't believe that I was still able to see through the moment enough to experience the fun. I was like - Oh no my jeans are going to get dirty… Weeee!! I’m pretty sure I was hysterical at that point though.
Because I think everything happens for a reason, I really had to dig deep for a takeaway lesson - pay less attention to what other people say or think, stay grounded (ha) and focus.
While I was busy trying to find my lesson, and make peace with the amount of money and footage that was lost, my mom was calling up everyone and anyone she knew to see how we could retrieve the drone, and Ralph was doing ebay research to see if anyone was selling just the drone bit since it was the only piece lost. Spoiler: Ralph found it and I got an early birthday present. Again.
It was probably the most embarrassing thing I've ever done, to date. But in retrospect, any shame or embarrassment is all in my head. So many people were watching. But no one laughed. No one was laughing, except for me. In hysterics!
In the end, it is a material object that I didn't actually need, but I am appreciative of my mom's tenacity and determination to get it back. Had a long enough ladder been available to her, I'm confident she would have climbed up and gotten it herself. And I'm thankful for Ralph's present.
“Some lessons can’t be taught. They simply have to be learned.” – Jodi Picoult
Is this a fail or a success (because of the lesson learned)?
