I have always loved the romanticism of balloon flight. It is a strange, beautiful and silent way to travel. As hairless bipeds, humans are naturally so poorly equipped for the cold, heat, or anywhere different than standing on the ground. Air and water are completely foreign elements for us to exist in. We are the fish out of water! But we come up with strange and marvellous ways to explore these spaces we are not equipped for. What I like so much about the idea of the hot air balloon is that we are still so much at the mercy of the element, air, itself - it is so quiet and peaceful yet so precarious. A hot air balloon is like a parachute with a fire lit under it. The air in which a hot air balloon floats can quickly change from a medium of quiet transportation and transcendence to a force that can dash us to pieces. For me, the hot air balloon symbolises ingenuity and freedom and man over matter, yet, as much as we have conquered an obstacle, we are even more at its mercy and find ourselves in an even more precarious position. We are the fish out of water suspended under that balloon - out of our natural environments.
Our ingenuity allows us to experience and get in amongst these extraordinary clouds and dramatic vistas. Still, at the same time, it puts us in a precarious position for which we were never naturally designed.
