Out here in the high elevation desert of Silver Hills the country is rough and remote. Much of it is so inaccessible that the common detritus of the dominant endemic species, Hillbillicus nevadensis (var.redneckii), is nowhere to be seen. So while the rutted, dusty BLM roads in the sage-filled valley bottoms are beribboned with spent shell casings, Coors light bottles, and empty cans of chew, there’s simply no easy way to litter the steep, rocky high country. There is only one unfortunate exception to this rule, and that is when trash is airlifted into these isolated mountains and canyons in the form of balloons. I’ve picked up so many trashed balloons over the years that I find myself wondering what in hell is so jolly about California, which is the nearby, upwind place where all this aerial trash originates. But maybe the prevalence of balloons in the otherwise litter-free high desert shouldn’t surprise me, since millions of balloons are released in the U.S. each year. We release balloons at graduation celebrations, birthday parties, wedding ceremonies, even funerals. There is in fact a company called Eternal Ascent that will, for $1,500, load your ashes into a balloon and float them away. Balloon launches for a pet’s ashes cost only $600, though, so if I go this route I’m going to advise my family to say that I was a Saint Bernard.
The moment a balloon is released it becomes trash, and this trash can cover some serious ground. A sixteen-inch diameter, helium-filled latex toy balloon will float for 24 to 36 hours, and if released can cover hundreds of miles while climbing to an altitude of 25,000 feet, where it freezes, explodes, and rains down to earth in the form of garbage, which some desert rat like me then has to tote home in his backpack. And while latex balloons will eventually biodegrade, the same is not true of metalized nylon balloons, which become a more or less permanent feature of the natural environment. That’s the downside of these so-called foil balloons. The upside is that they’re really shiny. Because they conduct electricity, metalized balloons also cause hundreds of blackouts in the U.S. each year by short-circuiting power lines, which perhaps suggests the vulnerability of the grid. If Cactus Ed Abbey were alive today he might enjoy the idea that the elaborate infrastructure of post-industrial capitalism can be brought down by a single, drifting, metalized Mickey Mouse. So the next time you release a balloon, don’t think of it as a celebratory symbol of freedom. Think of it as trash. You should also think of it as you would a message in a bottle, because someday, somewhere, there’s a chance that somebody will have to read whatever unimaginative nonsense is on your balloon. Given this rare opportunity to communicate across time and space, please try to come up with something more clever than the message on the last foil balloon I recovered out here: “Hoppy Birthday.”
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Island Press author, Michael Branch, is Professor of Literature and Environment at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has published five books many articles and essays, including recent environmental creative nonfiction in Utne Reader, Orion, Ecotone, Isotope, Hawk and Handsaw, Places, and Whole Terrain. He is the editor of John Muir's Last Journey.