It was a hot air balloon.
I knew it when I heard it. My brain recognized it, that blowing-out of loud breath. The on-off of the gas that controls the last moments of the balloon’s landing. It was just behind the neighbors’ house, in the park across the canal. My ears knew the sound, but my body heard “predator.”
There’s nothing in my life’s history that suggests predation by a very loudly breathing animal.
Doesn’t matter, it turns out. There is a deep sense of RUNRUNRUN that follows, almost without a pause, the snuffle that could be lion or bear or, I don’t know, mammoth?
Such a strange confluence of emotions. Dread at the too-loud, too-close breath. Joy at the bright yellow balloon, right there, huge and near and catching the first rays of sunshine.
In the moment, not super fun. But afterward, with the explanation clear to both my brain and my nerves, a clash of feelings that might be what it really is to feel alive.