The lengths some people will go to enjoy a moment of peace and solitude can be quite extreme, but thanks to drone technology that peace and solitude can be disturbed in ways that never would have been possible before.
A drone pilot named Kevin Miller from San Diego, California became the unwitting agent of this, while filming some up-close footage of a wind turbine in Rhode Island during his vacation. Instead of simply capturing some great, rarely seen angles of the turbine, he discovered something entirely unexpected when his drone made it to the top: a bearded man stretched out and catching some rays.
“The guy must have been napping because he did not notice the drone for 5-10 seconds,” Miller said to the Daily Mirror.
“At that point I decided to take a closer look by moving closer to say hi. Once I got closer I moved the drone side to side to say hello and he motioned back to the drone. It was a cool interaction between us,” Miller said.
In the video, the man on top of the 200-foot turbine is seen resting peacefully on his back before finally noticing the drone watching him. He waves to the drone as it flies closer and lingers near him before zooming away as the video ends.
Miller said when the drone landed, the man leaned over and the two waved to each other.
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The bearded man’s identity was unknown at first, with some speculating that he might have been an engineer who had decided to take a short break after conducting some maintenance work.
However, the truth is even more interesting. According to WPRO News, the man is actually a monk who works at the nearby Portsmouth Abbey School. In fact, the school even told the station that it’s not rare for the monk to soak in the sun atop the turbine.