summer

[ photo credit: ar ]

Summer weather always brings the balloons. A popular route flies over our neighborhood to the fields beyond. We'll be outside (a necessity in warm weather in a place that rains as much as it does here) and suddenly a great whooshing roar sounds through the trees; the balloons make absolutely no sound until the flame keeping them in the air is lit. 

Mostly the balloons stay well above the tree line and remain small dots of color speckled about. About once a summer however, one will come down close to the street. Everyone floods out onto the street, calling up to the people in the basket and, somewhere inside of them, hoping that the balloonist will run into one of the trees. Those above and those below call back and forth until the flame once again ignites and moves the balloon back into the wind current and therefore further down the street where the next group of people will begin calling.