56. AS IT IS IN HEAVEN

I have just had the most amazing, uplifting, breathtaking experience of my life.   

I hot air ballooned over Cappadocia. I flew in the clouds.  I cried.   I'm still beside myself, not quite back in my body, so I need to compose myself before I can compose this blog.

The fascinating history and it's wierd, other worldly landscape, is itself an out of body experience. To walk through valleys of thousands of pinnacle shaped geographical structures that have been hewn and chiselled from rock by people using sharp stones or rudimentary metal gives a real understanding to the notion of terror that caused them to live so hidden from their marauders.  To see their religious beliefs painted on the domed ceilings using natural pigments, still softly intact in the low light, garners much respect.  To follow their carved trails through underground tunnels and see where they cooked, made wine, filtered the smoke, taught, washed and toileted is humbling in the extreme.

But to fly over all this in a hot air balloon, as silent as a cloud, is something I will remember for the rest of my life.  In a life filled with magical experiences, from helicoptering through canyons, paddling kayaks to see subterranean Etruscan pots, to a giraffe giving birth, this was the tops.  I am still emotional thinking about it, and seeing the photos renews the experience, if only marginally.   I was caught between wanting a full bodied out of body experience and just watch, but my skook shouted and prodded and nudged that I must record it all, and I'm glad I did for the seconds passed so slowly but still there was so much to absorb.  My camera saw things that I was too blissed out to see.
 

The sky was purpling, streaks of grey cloud rose from damp bushes.  Spring flowers wilted in the dew.  Pink tipped the peaks of the ancient stone dwellings, and from behind them rose giant bubbles of various coloured silk.  Every few seconds the roar of methane, like a hungry animal at dawn, was let loose into the quiet, and a giant orange and purple flame lit the dawn.   Enormous bubbles of silk began to inflate from behind bushes, until the landscape seemed taken over by them.  Cars were dwarfed. People were silenced. The balloons had a life of their own, taking up so much sky space. A fog competed for attention, only adding to the mystery when it swirled around the ground.

Soon, the balloons were up.  We jumped into our baskets, and before you could worry about fear of heights, or falling out, or being cold ... we were up.  Up.  And away.

Below, other balloons rose gracefully to glide over the ancient civilisation.  The sun came and went. Fog curled around rocks.  The ground changed colour. Clouds licked my face. The sky was silent.  The sky roared. The fires warmed my skin. My hair stood on end.

No words can describe the next hour.

I cried.