Autumn Aloft

Every summer when was I young my family and I would go to the Boise River Festival. Pottery vendors, jewelry dealers, scarf embroiderers and cinnamon bakers filled the city parks with colorful kiosks and eager patrons. Local music echoed along the greenbelt while kids splashed in the Ann Morrison Park fountain. As night dimmed, red, yellow, and blue electric parade floats lit up downtown and tumblers and tubas danced through the streets. But every day, before all the festivities and concerts and shopping and parades, even before the sun had fully peaked its head over the rolling foothills, the sky would fill with balloons.

While it was still dark my mom would persuade us, her pajama clad children, into the grey Taurus and drive us up to a city lookout just as the sun crested Treasure Valley. A pink pig, a huge dairy cow, a classic coke bottle, and rainbow of floating orbs took to the heavens and speckled the sky. There was something about leaning up against the road railing wrapped in my Grandma's quilt, watching slow airships sail through the clouds that felt like poetry, but I could never quite find the right word to describe the experience; that is, until I became a teenager. Then I had no trouble at all summing up the annual event into one word. I dubbed it "boring."

And that's when my childhood ended, I suppose.

But then we moved and somehow the tradition of watching balloons launch got lost in the shuffle of life. And then I got older and the worries and stress of adulthood have kept me occupied and I've never quite felt up to the task of waking up early just to watch some silly blimps hang in the air.

But as the radio DJ announced that Park City was bringing back their famous hot air balloon launch, Autumn Aloft, after a 20-year hiatus, I felt a part of me reawaken. Even though I wasn't in Boise, it was as if a very real piece of my identity that had become dormant years before was also coming back after a long hiatus.

I carried my pajama clad baby and persuaded my messy-haired husband into the car on an early Saturday morning and we drove up to Park City. It was a beautiful drive.

Once we drove into the city limits, I searched for balloons, but John noticed something else.

Fog.

What the London? Hazel mist was splashing up against the fence!

We finally found the balloons and there was something almost dreamlike about the whole experience, as if I was reuniting with childhood itself after all these years.

But the green gargoyle and orange pumpkin snapped me out of it.

As I stared at the silly blimps hanging in the air, I thought to myself, "Does this mean I'm 'grown up' now? Is this balloon launch some kind of symbolic metaphor signifying my entrance into maturity and self-acceptance? If it is, then it's a lovely threshold."

But honestly, I don't believe anyone "grows up." I think we are who we are the day we're born, then we forget, and then we remember.