The Carterton Balloon Disaster

As I watch the rain teem down here in Auckland, my mind floats back some thirty years or so. Immoderately happy with the world, for reasons that do not concern us but have much to do with a very brilliant and beautiful anthropologist, I was driving along the D25 between Amboise and Loches, just south of the Loire in France. It was early evening on a warm September, and the sun was falling across an immense vista of plain and fields. To the west of the road, silhouetted against the declining sun, were dozens of hot-air balloons. They are popular in France, and there must have been a ballooning event in the region. They rested, to the eye unmoving, in the evening sky. They were a picture of calm and peace, and they were very beautiful.

There is a terrible contrast between my overwhelming image of ballooning, created all those years ago, and the news from Carterton today. Something must have gone terribly wrong to change such a gentle progress into a deadly plummet. The initial commentaries suggest a catastrophe that is at odds with the usual calm of balloon travel. And it seems that those who suffered in the accident may belong to the local community. My sympathies to all who have lost loved ones.