No Rest for the Wanderers

Sleeping in never happens on a Slaven trip. Our traveling experiences are bookended by darkness. We rise and set on a different timeline than the sun. On a sunless morning in Albuquerque, we had risen after just 3.5 hours of sleep. The day before, Tyler had driven 7.5 hours to get us from Arizona to New Mexico. The trip was promising to be ambitious, beautiful, and sleepless. Just like we like it!

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Featured photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/HszcCrXpHaGHPdCg9

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October 12th, 2024 - Our Desert Extravaganza Day 2

I shivered and tugged my jacket closer around me. The pre-dawn desert air was chilly. I shifted on my feet and took another look at the line we stood in. Beanie caps and blankets decorated the other occupants around us. We were bonded by our shared experience in that moment. We were all a little cold, a little sleepy, and very excited. We were about to go see hundreds of hot air balloons, after all! 

Our position progressed to the front as lines of school buses ferried passengers from parking lots to the Balloon Fiesta. A big yellow bus finally rolled up for us. I swallowed a bit of engrained homeschool trepidation and climbed aboard. The inside was decorated with an eclectic mix of dangling hot air balloons, string lights, and Halloween spiders. The driver was warm and enthusiastic. The bus decor was her doing. She was a proud representative of Albuquerque!

The paper hot air balloons bounced and wobbled as the bus roared through the streets. I stared at them, envisioning what we were about to see. A bubble of excitement blossomed in my stomach. Suddenly, it was starting to feel really, really real.

I’ve always loved hot air balloons. My family would hastily amend that statement. I’m obsessed. It stemmed from a childhood passion for my hometown’s annual hot air balloon festival. As a kid, I would devoutly memorize the name of each balloon and recite them to anyone who cared to listen. Every June, I’d plead with my parents to take us “balloon chasing,” our term for following the airborne vessels until one landed. Sometimes, they’d even let us scamper out to the landing site to “help” pack up the balloon. We’d run our hands over the still-warm nylon, caressing the colors that made our Ohio skies so remarkable. The smell of propane tickled our nostrils. Laminated trading cards with balloon facts were pressed into our small hands by the smiling pilots. I glued all of mine into a scrapbook. When I was old enough to be trusted with the family camera (an HP Photosmart E317, Google it for some early-2000s nostalgia!), I’d use it to snap countless balloon photos. Later, I made a Powerpoint with my photos and quizzed my sisters on the balloon names. I even handwrote a research essay about hot air balloons in fifth grade. My passion was incessant and undying. 

When I was dating Tyler, I’m sure I talked about hot air balloons ad nauseam every June. Not one to miss details, Tyler’s wonderful mind seized upon my passion and ran with it. In the summer of 2021, he hired a hot air balloon pilot to take us up for a private ride over my college campus. Midair, after I had stopped trembling with excitement, he proposed. I said yes, of course! It remains one of the most special moments he and I have ever shared. 

I say all of this to explain why I cried at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. Yes, I got all teary and emotional about hot air balloons. I know, it’s corny, but remember all of those things I just told you? A single hot air balloon represents twenty cumulative years of amazing memories with my family and my sweet husband. Multiply that by five hundred, and you’ll understand what I was experiencing at the Balloon Fiesta. 

The Dawn Patrol launched first, a handful of balloons lifting into the pre-dawn sky until they melded with the stars. The national anthem played, and fighter jets roared overhead. In tribute, every pilot on the ground lit up their burners. The vast field resembled a wildfire, long tongues of flame shooting into the sky. The wave of warmth that rolled toward the crowds was deliciously tangible. As the last notes of the anthem faded away, the bustle on the field began. Balloon crews sprinted around their balloons, each crew a microcosm in the universe of the Fiesta field. Then, row by row, five hundred balloons lifted off. The colors and patterns were endless. The smiling face of Jesus was depicted on one balloon. Another was a big green alien head. There was Darth Vader, Spider-Ham, Humpty Dumpty, a Chinese empress, a green elephant, a fox, a chicken, and Smokey the Bear. Eah new set of balloons provided new and interesting things to look at. All too soon, a morning breeze picked up and the balloons drifted away. Following suit, we bid our farewells to the sky full of airborne colors and drifted out of Albuquerque.

Eight hours of driving lay ahead, so we took turns napping and driving. Late afternoon found us at the Four Corners National Monument. Like every other visitor, we stretched our legs across state lines to touch Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. As it turns out, we were also touching three nations: the Navajo Nation, the Ute Nation, and the United States. The Navajo Nation has always interested me. It is the largest Native American reservation in the United States, larger than the state of West Virginia. Between tumbleweeds and red hulking cliffs, small homes sit hardly higher than the sagebrush. Dust paints the scenery bleak. Did you know that only 1 in 3 Navajo Nation residents have indoor plumbing? If you do the math, that means that 115,611 Diné people don’t have running water in their homes. The median household income in the Navajo Nation is $33,592, compared to a $77,719 median household income in the United States. The poverty rate is 38.3%. 

When you drive through the Navajo Nation, you might notice booths scattered like tumbleweeds along the roadsides. Some lean with a wind-beaten hunch. All are dusty. Many Navajo artisans make a living selling fry bread and jewelry from booths positioned in tourist-convenient locations. At the Four Corners Monument, booths circle the intersection of four states. I browsed through beautiful handcrafted silver jewelry and handpainted pottery. One woman with warm brown eyes smiled at me as I did. We fell into chatting. Recalling our long drive to the Monument, I asked her, “How far do you have to drive to run your booth?”

Her answer revealed a startling reality. An hour. One way. The fuel prices were so prohibitive that she couldn’t afford to open her booth every day. In other words, she had to make a daily assessment of whether she had enough money to attempt to make a living. Despite this, she smiled.

The reality was stark.

We have much to be grateful for.