The Wisdom of Experience

There is something glorious about a hot air balloon.
There is something stupid about going up in one.
The stupid part is getting back down.

"Maybe," the pilot said, "I can get up over this thunderstorm."
He got up to about two or three miles high.
The thunderstorm was two or three times that high.
The pilot came down, of course, for the last time.

Two or three days after the storm had slammed the balloon and basket
back to earth, the basket was still filled with golf ball sized hail stones.

Something there is in a thunderstorm that does not love a hot air balloon.
Almost everything there is on the ground does not love a hot air balloon.

I hate to admit this, because it is pure nonsense, but John 3:8 had it right: "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is borne by a hot air balloon."

(Well, something like that.)

I can understand the beauty of a huge balloon against a blue sky, and the thought of drifting quietly from Tranquility to Serenity, but that is not how it is. The damned things are powered by a thunderous roar of burning gas, and the sky is saber-cut with crosswinds and incipient lightning bolts. Down below--a place finally to be achieved by pure chance and god-awful luck--the earth is studded with saguaro cacti and laced with barbed wire fences and power lines.

I know all about hot air balloons. I have been both a clergyman and a college professor.

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