In October, I step outside and my neck betrays me. It tilts. It’s a reflex now, a habit stitched into the muscle: look up. I’ve lived in Albuquerque for years and still, when the air is cool and the light is clean, I search the sky for color. I tell myself I won’t take more pictures—I have too many already, crooked and overexposed—but I do. I raise the phone anyway. Because a balloon drifting over a familiar street makes the world feel briefly unfamiliar, blessed, less ordinary. It’s hard not to look up when something is gently urging you to do so.
But you cannot spend all your time with your eyes in the clouds. Others are looking up, too—looking for different reasons. Those are the crews. The chasers. They scan the same sky, but they are reading it. They are mapping a moving target, listening to radios crackle with wind reports and altitude changes, translating the invisible into action. Where I see spectacle, they see a set of decisions unfolding minute by minute.
How the Chase Works
The pilot calls down their altitude, drift, and plan. In the basket: a burner, a few tanks, and nerve. On the ground: the crew vehicle, a map app with layers of roads and arroyos, a stack of known landing spots, and the experience to know when to ignore them all. A good crew doesn’t just follow; they “lead from behind.” They stay downwind and look ahead, anticipating the arc of the flight, not tailgating the balloon but shadowing its intention.
They read the day the way a cook reads heat. A small helium “piball” might have been launched before dawn to trace the low-level winds; the pilot tests layers by climbing or sinking—thirty feet, three hundred, three thousand—finding slight changes that turn the craft, teasing out a path. From the ground, the chase watches power lines and private land, traffic and fences, the geometry of a field that will forgive a landing. When the pilot radios, “Looking good to set down,” the crew hustles to the far side, positioning themselves where the envelope will finally touch down against the earth.
The landing looks quiet from a distance. Up close, it’s choreography. Someone grabs the crown line to steady the top of the balloon. Someone else works the deflation port when the pilot says the word. Burners hush. Heat thins. The nylon slacks, then it lay down like a tired animal. Hands spread across fabric, smoothing, gathering, rolling. The envelope is folded and fed back into its bag—this miraculous, airborne thing turned back into luggage. The basket is tipped, the rigging coiled, the tanks stowed. Strangers wave from sidewalks. Kids ask if they can help push. Photos are taken. A little dust on the cuffs. The radio goes quiet.
It isn’t glamorous. It is a practiced tenderness, the way a team returns something fragile to the ground without bruising it.
The Metaphor We’re All Living
This is where I stop pretending the chase is only about balloons. The longer I live here, the more I know: life is mostly pursuit. We chase the moments we cannot keep. We follow after brief, beautiful things—youth, luck, a parent’s laugh, a friend’s forgiveness—knowing they will descend somewhere we can’t reasonably predict. We listen for small signals. We study the currents. We get into the truck and try to be there—downwind, ready—when whatever we love returns to earth.
Impermanence isn’t a flaw in the design. It is the design. Ballooning admits what we try to deny: everything rises; everything comes down. Beauty isn’t proof of permanence; it is evidence of grace while it lasts. You accept that, or you live angry at gravity. The crews seem to know this. They are at peace with the terms. They’ll chase again tomorrow.
“If flying is the miracle, catching is the mercy.”
Who We Chase With
What saves all of this from loneliness is how many people do it together. Balloons make families out of strangers. Some have been crewing for decades—grandparents in fleece vests, their kids in ballcaps, their kids’ kids holding the crown line with serious faces, learning the work. Friends who met in a field at dawn are now godparents to each other’s children. Out-of-towners come from great distances—Wisconsin, Japan, South Africa, and Bristol—and are adopted for a week, handed gloves and a thermos, and told where to stand and when to pull. The language barrier disappears the moment the envelope tugs, and everyone leans in the same direction.
I’ve seen reunions happen between baskets and tailgates, the kind only a shared ritual can produce. People who fly together once a year but text all year long. People who plan entire vacations around a wind pattern. People who teach their children to cheer not just when the balloon rises, but when the crew in the dust makes the landing gentle. There are potlucks at rented casitas, toasts at brewery patios, quiet walks along the bosque when the morning debrief is done. A city of chasers, binding themselves to a season and, in doing so, to each other.
What the Chase Teaches
It would be easy to romanticize this, to pretend it is always a postcard. It isn’t. Sometimes the wind is wrong, the traffic snarls, a landing field vanishes into a “No Trespassing” sign, the radio fritzes, the plan collapses. Sometimes you arrive on time, and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you watch the balloon settle two streets over, and all you can do is wave and keep moving. There is a lesson in missing, too: you cannot own what you love; you can only accompany it faithfully.
Still, when it works—when the crew turns down the last dirt road and the basket kisses the earth softly—something inside unclenches. Relief, yes. But also recognition. The craft came back, and so did you. The chase isn’t only a pursuit; it’s a return.
The Last Act
By late morning, the city shrugs back into itself. On a block near an arroyo, a crew kneels in the grass, palms flat, as they push the final folds of nylon into a bag. Someone cinches the strap. Someone else pulls the zipper home. A kid ties a knot and grins like they invented rope. Tank valves are checked. The basket is loaded. A pilot thanks the landowner for the use of the field. Phones trade photos. Numbers are saved. Promises are made for next year.
They pile into the truck, and the radio is silent now, not because the day is over but because the work has moved inside them. Another memory stored. Another morning added to the ledger. Albuquerque is good at this—turning weather into ritual, strangers into companions, a week in October into a reason to belong.
Closing Reflection
Suppose Origins was about our first attempts to rise, and Dawn Patrol was about the discipline of hope in the dark. In that case, the chase is their echo in daylight—the acceptance of impermanence, the grace of pursuit, and the belonging we find in catching together what can never be kept alone.
I still look up when I step outside. I still take too many pictures. But I’ve learned to love the ground as much as the sky: the chase, the coordination, the imperfect arrivals. The balloon rises; we give chase; it lands; we fold it carefully and carry it out. We do not pretend it will last forever. We honor it because it won’t.
That is the heart of this city’s October. Impermanence accepted, beauty in pursuit. We chase what can’t be kept, and in chasing together, we become the kind of people who know how to let go—gently, gratefully—and still remember where to meet again when the winds turn kind.
By Kyle J. Hayes
kylehayesblog.com
Please like, comment, and share
Salt,Ink, & Soul 