The Center of the Universe by Laura J. Oliver

The six of us gathered in a wide open field shouldered by forests—the brown of winter surrendering to spring’s tender green. On the staff of a regional magazine, I was accompanying a feature writer we’d hired on a hot air balloon flight over the patchwork of farms that comprise Maryland’s eastern shore. A new day blushed on the horizon. The balloon, Azure Mountains Majesty, was spread out on the ground uninflated but was already attached to the basket and burner, her crew getting her ready to rise. It looked safe enough. 

We were a small group, which included Bruce (our pilot), the writer, publisher, and chase car crew. The air carried the scent of magnolia blossoms from the south, but spring was in her infancy, and assuming it would be cooler aloft, I wore jeans, sneakers, and a rose-colored SPCA volunteer t-shirt beneath a gray sweater. 

A fan began blowing pristine morning air into the nylon envelope, inflating it above the tethered gondola until the balloon stood upright, magnificent in all her glory. A pattern of linked violet triangles in varying heights encircled her against a yellow and peach background –much like distant mountains at sunrise—much like stained glass. 

We climbed awkwardly into the wicker gondola, standing in closer proximity to each other than we might have otherwise, like strangers in an elevator. Our pilot, blond, cheerful, in his early forties, climbed aboard as well, fired the propane burner, ordered the crew to release the tethers, and we began our ascent. 

Sound is a pressure wave moving through a medium—in the case of an earthquake, earth– in this case, air. So, while our planet is a rich soundscape, as you travel up it gets quieter and quieter until in space, with only 10 atoms to be found in a cubic meter, sound disappears. 

We weren’t going that high, but as the balloon rose higher and higher, we spoke less and less. Eventually the few comments were only murmurs, whispers. Bisected by roads, miles of farmland lay beneath us waiting to become lush fields of corn, emerald soybeans, and golden wheat. 

At cruising altitude, we stopped speaking altogether. We had entered a church, a temple of air. Far, far below we could see the chase car, flying without sound along back country roads to keep up, and a fox, flowing plume of a tail, racing silently through the rows of corn stalks, but it was as if we had entered a cathedral, our silence the held breath of a congregation before the benediction. Maybe we embodied a benediction. In the face of perfection, the heart holds only goodwill. 

The pilot fired the burner from time to time to keep us aloft, the soft whoosh of flame periodically interrupting the silence. Movement without sound. It made me think of the month I watched Halley’s comet transit the earth, sailing in silence through the solar system. It made me think of falling stars. We traveled at the speed of the wind; therefore, we felt no wind.  Einstein was right, everything is relative. The speed of light, the speed of sound, the frequency of memory.

There is an anomaly, however, where silence unexpectedly imprisons the chaos of noise on the ground.  These places are called “sound shadows.” Places where sound being generated in plain sight is inaudible. It’s intriguing because our senses tell us that what we can see we should be able to hear, yet this isn’t always so. One sound shadow is in downtown Tulsa. Dubbed, “The Center of the Universe,” it is a small concrete circle set within a larger circle of bricks in a town square. Bizarrely, if you stand in the center and speak, or even shout, a distortion of your words echoes back to you, yet they are inaudible to people just yards outside the circle.

This same phenomenon caused the decimation of troops in multiple battles in the Civil War.  Gettysburg, Seven Pines, Five Forks, Perryville. Commanders relying on being able to hear nearby battles begin in order to time the sending of reinforcements, waited just out of sight, perhaps a mile away, in utter silence, oblivious to the fact that the raging battles were already underway. 

Witnesses looking just across the valley at the battle of Gaines’s Mill, for instance, could see the advance of the Confederate army, could watch 50,000 soldiers in bloody conflict for over two hours, and yet not hear a sound, as if they were watching through glass. 

On the shore the sun was rising, the air heating up, and Azure Mountains Majesty needed to descend. It was going well, the chase car close. “Hang on to something,” Bruce advised. “Sometimes things get a little rough.”  I reached for a strut just as we hit a thermal, dropped fast and seconds later slammed into the ground. The basket tipped, dragged another 20 yards, regained some buoyancy, still flying just feet above the earth, and hit hard again, like a stone skipped on a lake. When we finally came to rest, I was hurt but embarrassed and didn’t want to show it. Thrown off his feet, the writer’s body had crushed us both against the side of the gondola and I’d bitten my lip. I did what I always seem to do when I’m hurt. Thanked everyone. (I know, I know.) But my appreciation was genuine—we’d just left church. 

Although we were strangers, we’d just taken communion. 

Is gratitude the medium through which love travels? Or like light does it fill the cosmos because that’s all there is?  Maybe love can’t be diminished. Once experienced, it can only grow. 

I have a theory. The love of untold civilizations, the affection of hearts more numerous than stars in the sky, is a never-ending energy radiating up towards the heavens from this sound-filled planet.

Hold your breath. Listen closely. If I were to say I love you, could you hear me now?

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.