In beauty, brains and brawn, the three balloonists were perfectly cast for the adventure. Pamela Brown and Rod Anderson were a visionary American couple who conceived of and nurtured the daring flight. Malcolm Brighton, their pilot, was a blond Englishman with a pioneer dash and swagger. The flight of The Free Life would be his 100th assent.
The late Anthony Smith asks why humans follow such improbable impulses. His own appetites for adventure ? including a motorcycle trip through Africa and ballooning across the Alps ? put him at the receiving end of innumerable mishaps.
He weaves his thoughts about human endeavor around the doomed 1970 flight of The Free Life from East Hampton, New York ? a symbol of the end of an era and of the human longing for the unknown.
