Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Love/Hate Relationship

Before I started working for the Fish and Game the idea of spending lots of time in airplanes and helicopters looking for animals and seeing the country from the air sounded awesome! How cool to be able to see everything from above, right?

Fast forward to the present, and I would rather get a cavity drilled sans nitrous than fly in a plane or helicopter. More than once while flying I have thought about how much better I would feel if I just opened the door and jumped out. That thought passed through my mind again last Tuesday morning while counting antelope, just before I did my best to fill the barf bag.

I love seeing the lay of the land from the air, it gives you a perspective of the landscape you just can't get from the ground. I have seen things from the air that many people will never be able to see. Every once in a while in between the bouts of nausea, Dramamine induced dizziness and the suite of nasty side effects from the Scopolamine, I absolutely love being able to take it all in from the sky.

Hardware Ranch Utah, can you see all the elk?

Zoomed in on the computer in Paint, and counted all the dots to make an even 500 elk in Rich County, Utah. There was no way I was going to get an accurate count from a moving airplane. You gotta love digital cameras.

Sometimes the man-made scenery isn't half bad from the air either.

2 comments:

Tristie hearts Dax said...

Cool pics, baby. I love your blog and your sweet playlist. You are so cool.

Grandma Beaner said...

Impressive. Crap, I can't really make out the elk at Hardware. What is it I'm looking for. . . dots, groups, what? You're amazing. So glad somebody can do this job for we Americans. Someone needs to protect, manage, and care for our wildlife.