Dream Flying
Once it has risen high enough a balloon can travel as far as the wind currents will take it until it bursts or deflates. By contrast you have to actively fly a kite and it only really gets lift by virtue of the restraint you give it; once free it topples and crashes. Balloons have loftier ideas and if you don’t hold them tight they will fly freely in a wild dream partnership with the wind.
Large balloons are built to carry you in their baskets and if they aren’t restrained they will take you before you are ready. Once aloft the course of a hot air balloon is decided through a skillful partnership between the pilot and the strata of winds that flow at different speeds and directions at different heights.
As a child, sick with chronic asthma, I was always a bit weedy and frail. My younger brother, brimming with health, is seen in our photographic record to rapidly close the three year size gap between us. We were the same height by the time I was ten, and he had more bulk and physical presence.
I don’t really remember what I dreamt of achieving back then - possibly I just didn’t have any such well formed ideas. I do know that I loved gadgets, wind-up toys, electric toys and anything to do with rockets and outer space, all of which certainly fueled my dreams. The idea of hot air balloons has always fascinated me and early on I had a book with pictures of the first untethered flight in 1783, fulfilling the dream of the Montgolfier brothers.
Back then dreaming made me a sucker for tempting toy advertisements into which I would read way more value than they really had to offer because my optimistic mind was too open to fantastic possibilities and I was always filled with hope. One description of a dancing skeleton that cost about $5 had me convinced it must be a low-cost radio-controlled puppet. My parents wouldn’t let me buy it but I never perceived the foolishness of my dream until I remembered it with the perspective of age.
Sometimes we see the past more clearly looking back, but even as the mists of the future clear partially with advancing years, so many of our dreams and memories morph and fade. If we are lucky we learn some guiding lessons and start to see purpose ahead and perhaps can harness the winds to control our own flight, if only a little. There always remains a veil over the last flight we will take to a yearned for destination of final purpose and destiny.
Certainly from age 13 onwards I have been a dreamer and an ideas person. More of a visionary, better on the planning than the follow through and finishing. An early environmentalist at boarding school, I waged letter campaigns and organized or joined local actions. My friends and I dreamt of changing the world, but as time went by not a lot changed and the problems seemed ever more complex.
When things are working, ever the optimist, my dreams tend to get bigger as they fly higher. But like uncontrolled balloon flight, dreams realized don’t always land as you expected. While at college in Yorkshire, England I did gardening work for a Mrs Lachs. She just wanted someone to cut her lawn, weed her beds and keep the garden debris-free, but she had hired an ideas person and a fearless doer. I successfully carried out my duties for a few weeks, but standing by the bonfire where I burned the garden refuse I started to imagine how her garden could be improved.
In Spring she went on a trip to America to see a doctor and I thought I would surprise her with some improvements. I extended a natural indentation amongst trees to dig out a pond and lined it with an old tarpaulin sheet I had. I also started to demolish some old coal bunkers that were no longer needed to improve a patio space. “Started” being the operative word as the sections were too heavy for me to remove alone. On her return my unrequested efforts were not appreciated and I got fired as much because I hadn’t done the simple tasks she required, like tying up the faded daffodils, than because she never wanted a pond and preferred the ugly coal bunkers whole. This life lesson is often remembered in our house like a cautionary parable to ensure I never again create another “Mrs Lachs’s pond”.
The popularity of science fiction stories in books, comics and film must surely demonstrate a shared dream of reaching new worlds. As vast as the Earth is, and mostly undiscovered by the majority of us, somehow we want to break free of the apron-strings of the mother planet and have yet more possibilities. Right now the most exciting dreams in this realm are the Spacex innovations and NASA landing on Mars with the Perseverance rover bearing Ingenuity, an off-world helicopter. As I write this blog we are still waiting to see footage of Ingenuity’s maiden flight. My impatience wonders why it’s taking so long after a successful landing. My dreamer reminds me that the best part of dreams is the waiting and imagining.
On the occasion of my 50th birthday my wife Jill organized a hot-air balloon ride over the rolling Virginia countryside. To experience balloon flight was a dream come true for me and I look back at the photos every now and again to re-live it. We have a record from those of us in the main balloon, some shots from family in a second balloon and some from a couple that stayed on the ground. I can remember the sensation of movement, the silence and the peacefulness. The fragility of the situation, yet the strength and sturdiness of the massive balloon and its apparatus. A dream realized, now frozen in time as a reminder to never stop flying dreams.