It is warm and sunny here in Bozeman on this Saturday morning. The mountains etch their dark silhouettes against the blue sky, and the bright sun is in my eyes as I spy a hot-air-balloon in the distance, drifting lazily toward the earth below. 

I grab my trusty green binoculars to get a better look. What appears is not one of the usual gaily-striped hot air balloons that often glide over our house. I blink my eyes in disbelief as I decipher a carmine red barn, complete with a golden silo at its side, floating high through the air. This enormous farm building replica balloon holds aloft, on tender strings, a small box containing, at most, probably eight human beings out for an adventure. Surely, a pilot deftly controls the fuel that powers the balloon up and down on its journey, while he scans the earth below, searching for a safe landing zone.

Remembering our own hot air balloon adventure here in Bozeman celebrating my birthday—when our gaily-striped balloon landed on a small knoll and almost took a tumble, rolling us all over on our sides before the pilot pressed the gas release to lift us back into the safety of the sky—remembering that perilous event, I wished them a safe and happy landing in their amazing red barn balloon, complete with its golden silo.

Putting down the old familiar green binoculars, I study the still-sturdy waterproof case marked Swarovski-Optic, TIROL, and remember the day nearly 40 years ago when I walked up the bumpy cobblestone sidewalk on Rue de Belle Vue from our house in Brussels in search of those binoculars. It was my husband’s 55th birthday, and I wanted to get him something special. In those days, we were expatriate Americans living in Europe.

Aiming for the sporting store on the corner of Avenue Louise and Rue de Belle Vue, I entered the building that was famous for having once been the nefarious German Headquarters during their occupation of Belgium during the Second World War. This building had been the target of Allied bombs, but the American and British pilots never hit this target, as they flew up Rue de Belle Vue. They did, however, bomb the beautiful Art Nouveau mansion that stood on the corner next to our house, which was why our house wore a long iron brace on one sustaining wall.

When I walked out of the one-time Gestapo Headquarters / turned Sports store with the binoculars under my arm, I had no idea how many diverse miracles those binoculars would focus on. I could not look into the binoculars and see into the future that lay ahead of us and imagine that after our 17 years in Brussels, we would live for another three years in Holland in the city of Wassenaar with those green waterproof binoculars, and use them to explore the dunes and dikes that protected the Netherlands from the threatening North Sea.   

Nor could I have imagined focusing on the birds and dolphins in Boca Ciega Bay in St. Petersburg, Florida, where we lived for a couple of decades after our 20 years in Europe. Believing that we had settled down in Florida, I began to relax a little. It was 2019 and then, whap! The pandemic hit!

The telephone rang. “We are coming to get you,” my daughter announced. “We are leaving Bozeman in our motor home and we will be there in about three or four days!” I didn’t resist, and thus, my life took another unexpected twist.

The binoculars, a few favorite paintings and a handful of clothes got packed into the RV, which became nicknamed, “the Rescue Vehicle.” We bumped and thumped across America, climbing our way onto Interstate 90, past the wild antelope and into Bozeman, Montana, yet another a new home to explore with those binoculars always in the backpack. The green, waterproofed binoculars, like faithful friends, reveal new miracles like the red Montana barn floating in the beautiful, fresh, clear morning sky of Bozeman. They help me discover some of  the amazing joys and unexpected pleasures of living  in Bozeman.   

Joyce Van Horn, Artist and Writer, is currently showing her Encaustic Paintings at the newly opened AURORE FRENCH BAKERY on W. Baxter Lane.