As I perused the 159 pictures I managed to shoot during our 54-minute flight, I caught myself lingering over one. Kind of a cool shot, mainly because the reservoir is so full, and it has been over 15 years since we've seen it with so much water. But I found my focus shifting to so many other places in that image.

Nineteen, to be exact.

Places where:

- eldest son first got his hands on the control of a boat, and headed us straight for the cliff wall,

- I watched for over 15 minutes as a doe scrambled on near-verticle cliffs to escape the attentions of an over-amorous, too small buck,

- a great spot for lunch on opening day,

- the steepest, most frightening spot to park a truck on the entire mountain,

- a nice, 5-point buck laid motionless in mahogany as I drove past, less than three meters outside the window

- I and the heeler at the time hiked down in waist-deep snow (my waist, not hers) to shoot pronghorn that had gotten lost in the canyon and stranded on the ice,

- a mule deer doe got stranded on the ice, too slick to get up with her hard hooves, and I, wearing my figure skates, pushed her to shore,

- the vultures' roosting tree,

- several car bodies from the 1920s are dumped, some still with wooden bodies,

- the windy spot my fiancee and I camped in the weekend we got engaged,

- the less windy spot we camped in the next night,

- the secret sandy cove where I tipped her velvet at water's edge the day before,

- I rescued a beaver stranded on a dam too big for him to build,

- I last visited with Jesse,

- just one curve around the mountain I rescued yet another beaver off the county road,

- I got involved with my first major enforcement case, two bighorn sheep poached by two deputies from Chicago,

- one of the first geocaches I found,

- and the first time the entire family hiked along as I hunted deer.

No wonder it takes me so long to go through flight photos.