Slowly and quietlythe ground receded away from us and for a moment I felt a tense awareness of how casual this was - no seat belts, noattachments,just the five of us standing in a close group inside the not quite waist high gondola wicker wall while we smoothly ascended higher and higher. An old quote of Will Rogers on one of his radio shows about being high on a cat-walk on Hoover Dam and knowing that he was going to stub his toe and go floating up in the air and over the waist high wall popped into my mind. So, wishing I had a neck strap on my camera, I belatedly got the shot of the chase van and crew on the ground below. ThenMike drew our attention to the shadow of our balloon against the receding wooded hill and someone said"That's us". And indeed it was. The unfelt air current - since we were moving with it - carried us along Muddy Creek shrouded in frost covered trees, most still in the shade of the coming sunrise. All this time we were approaching a tree covered ridge that diverted Muddy Creek to the right. Mike, deftly controlling the propane burners, took us at tree top level up and over while telling us to watch for the deer that ran in alarm from the passing balloon. I could hear them running through the leaves but could not see them until they ran out into an adjoining corn field.
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