I have known today a magnificent intoxication. I have learnt how it feels to be a bird. I have flown.
Yes I have flown. I am still astonished at it, still deeply moved.
— Le Figaro, Balloon Aviation 1908
Saturday, my friend, Kelli, and I flew like a bird and took a ride in a hot air balloon.
It was, indeed, a magnificent intoxication.
It began in a quiet park in the little town of Woodstock, Virginia.
They pulled out the basket, unrolled the balloon, and used giant fans to fill it with air.
And then, they tried to pull it up.
The first attempt looked like it was going to work, until it started falling back towards us...that wind is a fickle mistress.
Btw, it was cha-cha-cha-chilly.
It wasn't long at all before we were snug in our basket and the wind gently pulled us into the sky. Or was it the earth that was pulling away from us? Honestly, it was hard to tell. I've never experienced a more peaceful form of movement. I believe it was at that moment that I became intoxicated, magnificently.
Suddenly the wind ceased. The air seemed motionless around us. We were off, going at the speed of the air-current in which we now lived and moved. Indeed, for us there was no more wind; and this is the first great fact of spherical ballooning. Infinitely gentle is this unfelt motion forward and upward. The illusion is complete: it seems not to be the balloon that moves, but the earth that sinks down and away...
Villages and woods, meadows and chateaux, pass across the moving scene, out of which the whistling of locomotives throws sharp notes. These faint, piercing sounds, together with the yelping and barking of dogs, are the only noises that reach one through the depths of the upper air. The human voice cannot mount up into these boundless solitudes.
-Alberto Santos-Dumont, My Air-Ships, 1904
I think we were moving at the speed of the sun and following the same rolling path of the morning mists.
There was one moment, five minutes into the flight, when I looked down and heard Kelli's words from the previous night. I asked her if she was going to be okay despite her slight fear of heights and she said, "It's okay because I was thinking about it and we're going to be in a basket. It's not like we're going to be strapped to a parachute or anything."
Yah...basket vs. parachute...that does sound comforting?
I mean, we might be held up by fraying ropes and a balloon with holes in it, but at least we're in a parachute-less basket, so we're okay.
My queasy stomach started to tell me that maybe there was something to consider about being afraid of heights after all.
But then I got distracted by the way the sunshine highlighted the ropes...
...and the way the shadows deepened the hills...
...and the way the fire puffed so concisely...
and how the day sky slowly seemed to push out the night sky.
There was a lot to ponder up there.
For example, there was a point I began to ponder why I enjoy taking so many pictures, even when they are of the same thing. And yet I can't seem to delete any of them. To me, they all seem to have a unique beauty.
We saw herds and herds of deer running from one patch of forest to the next. We apparently also saw a lot of cows. So much in fact that when I got home, Kelly (my sister) asked me why all my pictures were of cows.
I don't know why.
Maybe I was intoxicated (magnificently) at the time and thought they were awesome.
Eventually, we started to descend.
The landing was like a gentle hug from earth welcoming us back.
We all spontaneously cheered. I'm not sure why.
Oh, and don't worry, we just landed in a stranger's yard. We couldn't get out until our driver asked permission from the stranger to unload and wrap up.
At first the wrap up process appeared to me like a David and Goliath situation.
But in less than ten minutes, the big balloon was packed in its little pouch and we were on our way home...thoroughly and magnificently intoxicated.
I think I have now joined the ranks of Mr. Pene du Bois and am convinced that the best and happiest way to travel is by balloon.
"I am still astonished at it, still deeply moved."
The best way of travel, however, if you aren't in any hurry at all, if you don't care where you are going, if you don't like to use your legs, if you don't want to be annoyed at all by any choice of directions, is in a balloon. In a balloon, you can decide only when to start, and usually when to stop. The rest is left entirely to nature.
— William Pene du Bois, The Twenty-one Balloons
