Southern Indiana Living JulyAug 2016

no sense of motion, we gently lifted of
into the morning, the ground falling away
behind us. Beazly fred the propane torch –
a periodic roar punctuated with profound
silence – as we rose high enough to see
downtown Louisville above the trees, and
beyond that a gray smudge of the New
Albany Knobs.
The men who go to the moon will
often send back images that remind us
that we all live on the same large piece of
rounded rock; the ground, air and water
are all connected.
A balloon ride can ofer the same
vision, albeit the view that stretches from
Clark County, Indiana to Bullit County,
Kentucky may not have quite the same
sweep or urgency. Still, there was enough
tree, plant and bird identifcation going on
up there to realize the need to try.
There was also the litle girl dressed
in red, siting in a chair in her driveway
about 500 feet below, shyly waving as we
passed overhead.
The more defned and competitive
mission of the fight was for Beazly to
drop a three-ounce packet of grass seed
onto a white cross on the ground planted
there by the “Hare Balloon” – the frst one
up and the frst to land.
Beazly steered our balloon with
practiced hands. We drifted for a time at
only about 200 feet – a height that came
with the slightly guilty pleasure of being
able to peer down into hundreds of back
yards, all of them devoid of people who
had gone to work, but leaving their varying
degrees of landscaping abilities behind.
Then, watching the parade of balloons
in the sky ahead of us to plot the
best path to the white cross, Beazly took
us up to 1,000, 1,200 and then 1,500 feet,
but with almost no sense of movement.
We were just up there, hitchhikers
in the sky, constantly moving to catch the
various wind currents. Turning the balloon
more sharply east or west required
opening a small overhead vent – and
about 40 years of practice.
We sailed over the Waterson
Expressway, a tree nursery, the massive
General Electric Plant and the busy Gene
Snyder. Beazly, rotating his arm to warm
up, hurled the seed packet and atached
ribbon toward the white cross below,
falling short and waxing disappointment.
“I’m competitive,” he said. “I like
to win.”
None of us wanted to land. We
drifted over an old gravel pit, where the
balloon’s colors were refected in blue water.
We drifted over a herd of catle made
nervous by our arrival. We joked about
pushing on to Tennessee, then gently
landed in an open feld somewhere near
Cedar Creek Road – after frst brushing so
close to tree tops I could grab a few bright
green leaves.
The ground crew in the van somehow
quickly found us. The people who
work the feld in which we landed – Jane
Anne Franklin, a Louisville Zoo animal
trainer, and her husband, Dave Campbell,
who worked with the zoo elephants
– found us.
We who fell from the sky – and
those who train zoo animals – celebrated
our safe landing with the traditional toasts
of post-fight champagne. I kept the botle
as a souvenir. And the leaves. •
About the Author
Bob Hill owns Hidden Hill
Nursery and can be
reached at farmerbob@
hiddenhillnursery.com.
For more information,
including nursery hours
and event information, go
to www.hiddenhillnursery.
com
July/Aug 2016 • 12