The eleven minutes before the first burn

Everyone asks me about the lift-off. I understand why — it is loud, the flame above your head is unreasonably large, and the ground leaves you in a way you have never felt before. But the lift-off is not the part I remember after flights.

Somewhere above 900 feet, if the morning is kind, the wind stops pressing against the envelope. The basket stops its small creaking. There is no engine, there never was. And for about eleven minutes, on the best days, there is nothing.

Passengers who arrive talking stop talking. Passengers who arrive silent keep silent. The ones who have flown before just close their eyes.

This is the part I think about on the drive home. Not the migration below — although the migration is the reason most of us are here — but the interval. The small piece of time between breaths when a human being realizes that silence is not the absence of sound. It is its own thing.

I have been flying the Mara for fourteen years. I have landed on the eastern escarpment at sunrise more than two thousand times. The lift-off is the part the brochures want. The eleven minutes are the reason I'm still doing this.