Grand Canyon from Space Video

One day two years ago, a man ties a GoPro camera to a little white balloon. He releases it. In the video, we see him letting us go: his open hand a goodbye. Then, we ascend above the red earth until we can see a red squiggle through the Southwest. It is the Grand Canyon.

After rising steadily through red-orange earth, our little balloon now matures. It takes in the inky black of space, separated from the earth by a hazy, yet luminous, line that wobbles back and forth as our dirigible bobbles happily through space.

Departing, a peace descends-ascends: oh, this is it, to travel beyond the confines of earth, to edge away, above, beyond. To be freed.

Just then, at more than 100,000 feet above the planet, we see a pale drippy thing scurry past our gaze. Our camera eye is abruptly swiveled 180 degrees upward. Before our shredded self, a hundred white confetti bits explode outward across an azure blue background. They--we--drift. A little meteor shower of dispersed skin. So beautiful.

No time for that, now. We plummet crazily downward, a Charlie Chaplinesque comedy of sped up time. Just as easily as we left the earth's confines, we are deposited solidly again in the low, ochre field, which doesn't hesitate to take us--or is rather indifferent to us--as we, who have known such expanses, stare again our camera eye at the close, dried, yellow brush.

Just wondering: Which place is the homecoming?

Watch Grand Canyon from Space video here