The Sleeping Giants of New Mexico
It was 5:30 a.m. when I first saw them waking. Stretched hundreds of feet across a dewy field, and like so many soldiers coming to attention to salute the glowing moon, their mammoth chests filled with air, and their other-worldly forms began rising from the ground.
It was mesmerizing.
I’d been friends with Nancy a little more than two years, but in many ways she was still a mystery to me. The kind of person who listens far more than she speaks, you sort of immediately knew Nancy must have had a difficult past. Trust didn’t come easily to her, but what I had learned in that length of time was that she liked baking, celebrating Thanksgiving on a large scale, and, more than anything, hot air balloons.
We were sitting in her apartment one July afternoon when she brought up the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. “Would you be interested in going?” she asked.
I’d never given more thought to a hot air balloon than the minute or two it takes for one to drift across the occasional sky, but I have a certain weakness for spontaneous travel plans. “Sure,” I shrugged. “Why not.”
One AirBnB booking and two plane tickets later, we’d sealed the deal. Nancy was on a mission to cross something off her bucket list, and I was in it for the irresistible aroma of the unknown.
Three months later, at 4:30 a.m., we were winding our way through the mountains of Albuquerque. Nancy, quiet and pensive in the passenger seat as she navigated us by Google Maps; and me, regarding the world with great disdain because I was up before the sun and hadn’t had coffee and the old people in front of us were driving slower than molasses in the wintertime. Nancy took it in stride.
“There will be caffeine somewhere when we get there,” she said.
“I hope so,” I said.
An hour later we parked our rental car in a sea of Winnebagos and walked into the festival. A couple hundred people — bundled in coats and blankets and speaking to each other in the hushed tones of those about to witness something rare and important — had gathered near a row of trucks on a lawn the size of several football fields.
By mid-morning, this stretch of land would be packed with thousands. Vendors would fill the empty spaces, pressing through the throngs to sell deep-fried everything and hock their goods with cries of “Get yer hot air balloon T-shirt/shot glass/key chain, right here folks!” But right now, in the wee hours of a crisp fall morning, the festival belonged to the purists. Nancy was among her own. Having found a coffee stand that promised up to 11 free refills, I was also starting to enjoy myself.
The loud hiss of burning propane and a brilliant 50-foot flame ripped suddenly through the night. The crowd erupted with cheers. Nancy’s eyes lit up as she turned to me and fished a brand new Canon Rebel camera, bought especially to document this trip, from the large pocket of her bright yellow backpack. “It’s the Dawn Patrol. It’s starting.”
For the next half-hour, I marveled at the way a shared human experience breeds joy among strangers. Spectators, pilots, and balloon crews were united by passion — a frenzied enthusiasm punctuated by the exclamations of the crowd (“Count down from 10!) and the synchronized responses of the balloonists (“Everyone, light up your balloons on 1!).
As the first streaks of light split land from sky on the horizon, a group of roughly 20 balloons drifted heavenward. By the time the mountains were gilded by the white-gold glow of that earliest morning sun, more than 200 of them had pierced the sky, and still several hundred more waited their turn.
I stretched out on the grass and propped my head on my backpack. A million swatches of color, it seemed, floated above me and all around me. The longer I laid there staring into the sky, the more I became aware of my physical smallness in the world. I thought, maybe, I could understand a little bit of Nancy’s fascination. The Mass Ascension at a hot air balloon festival demands your full attention, and it does not disappoint.
Later in the car, I asked Nancy about the balloons. Why she thought she liked them so much. “It’s kind of a niche thing, you know, to love them enough to plan travel around them,” I’d said.
She didn’t answer right away. A comfortable silence hung between us, and she looked out the window toward the mountains.
“You know how people always get balloons for their birthday?” she asked. It was rhetorical. “I never did, but I remember seeing other people get balloons and they always seemed really happy. So I guess…I guess now it feels like these are my balloons.”
