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1997 VINCELLES, France- The cherries are within tantalizing reach at the top of the tree, large and succulent, pleading to be plucked. But, then - whooosh! - the tree seems to shrink and the orchard falls away, so far from view that it could be in the next county.
As though riding an elevator in Boston's Big Pru, we ascend swiftly. Rising to the accompaniment of hoarse blasts of a propane burner, we can see this bulbous vehicle reflected in the dull green wetness of the Yonne River only as splotches of red and blue. Too high now for much definition.
Controlling the highs and lows, ups and downs of the morning journey over lush Burgundian farmland and small towns, Adrian Kriesi captains his hot-air balloon with an assurance that steadies six neophyte passengers - basket cases in the cramped wicker basket (or gondola) getting used to flying at the mercy of wind currents.
Kriesi, a handsome young Swiss who shifts his ballooning to the Alps in winter, terms himself "an aerostier. That's what we say at home, anyway, but driver . . . pilot . . . drifter. Whatever you want."
We could have picked us some nice cherries, I lament to him, but the captain says he didn't want to stay in those trees long. "Just a bit of orchard surfing," he says with a laugh. "Then on to something else."
Another of our captains, Leigh Wootten, commanding a less flighty conveyance, a river barge called Belle Epoque, had suggested that a side trip by balloon would offer a different, overhead, perspective of the countryside. Having made arrangements, he docked at Vincelles. Kriesi, awaiting in a van, took us to a field outside of town where two balloons were moored, heating up, billowing and jiggling. Colorful stacks of fabric - ours striped in red, yellow, and blue, the other in maroon and yellow - they seemed gigantic ice cream cones, measuring 100 feet from basket to dome.
Frankly, I wasn't really crazy about taking this trip. Airplanes and mountain trekking aren't bothersome, but this bubble-headed contraption, bobbing and weaving at the whim of the elements, did not inspire much enthusiasm within me. Intrepid friend Aurelio, who would go to any heights for a kick, prevailed, however.
As the ropes tying down the balloons were released by ground crewman Jean-Marie Fanucci, cutting us off from Earth, and the upping commenced, I thought of the French brothers, Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier. They who had launched this light-headed pastime in 1783, and even gave a demonstration at Versailles to the delight of a couple of firmly grounded spectators, King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette. Wouldn't those two unfortunates have loved a balloonly getaway from the guillotine platform in 1793?
The Montgolfiers, apparently not overly eager to leave the good Earth themselves via their invention, wisely selected for the inaugural flight passengers unlikely to sue, a chicken, a duck, and a sheep, and not even provided barf bags.
"Good thinking," I'd said to Aurelio. "Why don't I send a chicken, a duck, and a sheep to accompany you, and you'll feel like you're doing an historic reenactment?"
"With you I've got the chicken," she said, making it certain there'd be no sheepish behavior of ducking the experience. Although the torrid, noisy, intimate emissions from the burner at the center of the basket seemed to scorch my vestiges of hair, the warmth was also welcome in the chilly early morning.
Rapidly - yes, majestically - the monumental ragbag climbs through a necklace of fog as the basket sways gently, nipping a cloud or two, leaving birds behind and finding an ocean of celestial blue over the overcast. Revealed, the horizon is circular. Breezes push us to a vantage point where the Earth appears clearly, a patchwork quilt of fields, forests, villages, lumpy hills, roads, streams. Fitting together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the fields are geometrical jumbles of trapezoids, squares, triangles, rectangles.
At 2,500 feet all is serene. Tile-roofed towns appear as scattered rubies, forests deep green band-aids. Verdant stands of wheat muscled by the wind are tidal waves. The drift is dreamy, evoking an upbeat lyric from a group called Fifth Dimension: ". . . won't you fly with me in my beautiful balloon?"
Floating incredibly, peacefully, mellowed-out - but my reverie is tweaked by the yips of the dogs of Vincelles. Inconsiderate of them, their barks biting way up here. Are they exceptionally strong canine voices?
"Oh, no," says the captain. "But there is nothing between them and us, no walls or buildings as there might be on the ground, to block their sound. Hey, look there . . . a salute." Children are pouring from a school with teachers to wave at us. We return the greeting, too distant to make out presumed expressions of joy and wonder on their faces.
Had their mothers read to them, as mine did to me, Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, "The Swing"? I haven't thought about it for decades, but this transport brings back fragments:
". . . up in the air so blue . . . up in the air and over the wall 'till I can see so wide, rivers and trees and cattle and all over the countryside. . . ."
If swinging was so rapturous to boy Stevenson, imagine what ballooning would have done for his imagination.
Monitoring the flow of gas, Capt. Kriesi keeps us yo-yo-ing while Fanucci in the support van follows below as closely as roads will permit. Presently it's time to land, in a potato field. It's OK with the farmer, who also owns the cherry trees I nearly pirated on the fly. With a negligible bump we touch down. Out of gas, the balloon sags.
Then it collapses, spreading, spent, across the field, 600 pounds of nylon to be jammed into a bag. The process is like trying to pack a small suitcase with much too much. But Kriesi and Fanucci are expert stuffers, and Aurelio gets an assist. The farmer says we may pick some cherries, this time from below.
They go beautifully with the champagne popped by the captain to toast survival. I wonder if the Montgolfiers treated their brave guinea pigs - the chicken, duck, and sheep - so lavishly.
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