It’s the time of year when the desert begins to remember the cold. The mornings bite a little sharper, the light shifts from golden to amber, and in Albuquerque, the rhythm of fall comes with rituals all its own. The State Fair folds up its tents and carnival lights, and before the dust has even settled, the sky gives itself to balloons.
The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is not just an event here; it is a season. The largest gathering of hot air balloons in the world, and every year, it pulls tens of thousands of people into its orbit. It rewrites the city’s mornings. Commutes pause. Joggers stop mid-stride. Children tug their parents toward the sidewalk, phones raised, because a balloon — shaped like a cow or a stagecoach or just a simple rainbow stripe — has drifted so low it seems ready to brush the rooftops.
And then the chase crews arrive, pickup trucks trailing, men and women moving quickly, packing away the canvas like a secret folded back into itself. You see this enough, you could call it ordinary. But I’m still too new here, not jaded enough, because every time I look up and catch sight of one, it feels like the sky has been interrupted by wonder.
There’s a madness in waking at 3:30 a.m. just to stand in the cold. Yet thousands of us do it, year after year. The roads snake toward Balloon Fiesta Park in the dark, headlights lined up like a procession. Coffee cups steam in cup holders, blankets drape over shoulders, and conversations hum with anticipation.
When you arrive, the field is still hushed, waiting. Crews shuffle around baskets, propane tanks hiss faintly, and in the distance you hear murmurs, laughter, the rustle of nylon being unfurled. The night sky holds onto its stars a little longer.
And then — the Dawn Patrol.
A handful of balloons rise first, lighting their burners in unison, glowing like lanterns against the indigo dark. The sound is unmistakable: the sudden whoosh of flame, the gasping exhale of fire against the silence of morning. The crowd breathes with them, every burst of light pulling eyes upward. For a moment, it feels less like a spectacle and more like a ceremony.
And then the Mass Ascension begins.
Dozens, then hundreds, then more than you can count. Balloons rising in waves until the sky is littered with color — a slow unfurling of the surreal, so vast and so improbable that it borders on disbelief. You look up and the horizon is gone, erased by canvas and flame.
There’s a peculiar intimacy in standing with thousands of people you don’t know, all of you bundled against the same chill, sipping coffee, biting into breakfast burritos, sharing a collective awe. You don’t need names. You don’t need history. For a few hours, you are kin to anyone whose head tilts back in wonder.
Children squeal at the “special shapes” — bees holding hands, Darth Vader and Yoda, cows larger than houses. Photographers kneel, point, capture. Tourists beam into news cameras, their voices shaky with joy, telling reporters this was a lifelong dream.
And I wander among it all, part of the throng but also apart, notebook in my pocket, questions in my head. What does it mean that people travel across the world just to stand in this field and look up? What does it mean that beauty, when shared, feels almost like communion?
By mid-morning, the sky begins to empty. Balloons scatter, floating toward the mesa, toward neighborhoods, toward open lots where chase crews wait to claim them. The field thins out, tourists drift toward vendors selling chile and frybread, and traffic snarls for miles.
You sit in it, inching forward, the high of the morning giving way to the dull grind of engines and exhaust. The burrito is gone, the coffee cold. Reality asserts itself.
And yet, even in that crawl, I find myself replaying the moment of lift. The quiet between burner blasts. The way balloons floated like prayers, drifting wherever the wind allowed. My fear of heights keeps me on the ground, tethered by gravity, but still — I wonder what it must be like to surrender that control. To look down on this desert city not as blocks and intersections but as a sprawl of lives stitched together under the watch of mountains and sky.
Part of the gift of the Fiesta is this: that you don’t need to rise to feel lifted. Wonder has its own gravity, and it doesn’t care whether you leave the earth or not.
Living here, you learn to get used to things. Chile roasters set up outside grocery stores in September, flames spitting, smoke curling into the air until the whole city smells like survival. The Sandias are turning pink at dusk, like the mountains are reminding you that the day is theirs to close. Balloons dotting the sky in October, so common they could be dismissed as background.
But used to doesn’t mean unmoved by.
Maybe that’s the secret of Albuquerque — that it can hold the extraordinary and the ordinary at the same time without letting either collapse the other. It teaches you that wonder isn’t about distance but attention. That staying, not leaving, sometimes brings you closer to beauty.
The Balloon Fiesta comes and goes, the crowds depart, the fields go quiet again. But for one week, every year, the sky itself becomes a canvas — and it belongs to balloons.
And that’s what keeps me here. Not the spectacle, not the scale, not even the food or the music or the culture, as rich as all of that is. It’s the reminder that beauty doesn’t always come from someplace else. Sometimes it rises right in front of you, again and again, until you learn to stop, to look up, to hold still in the presence of wonder.
By Kyle J. Hayes
kylehayesblog.com
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