Taking a family business sky high

While some moonlighters may dread their weekend shifts, local NBT banker Darrel Long looks forward to his early morning side gig, since it involves flying high above the Northwest Corner hills glowing in the sunrise.

Perhaps better referred to as his “dawnlighting” operation, Darrel is the president and founder of North Canaan-based hot air balloon outfit Spirit Ballooning, which has been taking intrepid denizens of the region on daybreak flights across the southern Berkshires since 2009.

Darrel has been a licensed balloon pilot since 1994 when he flew his first solo voyage in a self-built balloon he called Spirit, now the company’s namesake. “I was not only a brand new student,” he said, “I was a test pilot in my own balloon!”

Luckily, the design was sturdy, proven by its place in the company’s three balloon fleet today, three decades later.

Darrel said once the balloon was built, he realized he needed a crew, so he got to building the next element in the process: a family. “We’ve got two sons and two daughters, and they’ve all been involved since they were born,” he said, explaining that the motivation behind Spirit Ballooning was partially to sustain the family’s passion as the kids developed their own interest in flying.

The real purpose, though, is to share the joy of floating above the verdant morning landscape with others, Darrel explained: “We don’t really do it to make a lot of money, we mainly do it to share the experience.”

Darrel Long shows off the burner flame, the primary instrument used in hot air balloon flight.Madi Long

His daughter Madi, who is the Audience Development Editor for The Lakeville Journal and The Millerton News, agrees. During a recent conversation, she recalled a young couple the family met at a balloon festival in Vermont over a decade ago.

“When we first started flying them, they were just boyfriend and girlfriend,” she said, but after a few years of taking them up, “we eventually got invited to their wedding.”

“They were our passengers, but then it became so much more than that,” she said, noting that similar experiences of building relationships came to define her upbringing around hot air balloons. She said that when she was growing up in North Canaan, she made many of her friends after having landed on their parents’ lawn in a balloon.

Madi put her pilot training on pause in high school and college to focus on other things, but recently she’s considering a renewed push for a license. After all, it’s in the Long family DNA – “People learn their ABCs, and we just, like, learned to fly balloons,” she said with a laugh.

Her older brother Jordan was the first of the Long children to get licensed when he was 19, and had built his first balloon by 20 – Foxtrot, which also is featured in the Spirit fleet.

Jordan Long checks the rigging as the balloon prepares to launch.Madi Long

Ryan, the eldest, is also licensed, and currently flies balloons in California but is soon to move back to the Northeast where he may help out with the family business, Jordan said.

Now 30, Jordan is a commercial airline pilot for JetBlue by day and globe-trotting balloon flyer by morning, having soared over the Alps, the lush fields of Ireland, and most recently Northeastern Spain, amongst other destinations.

When he thinks about the differences in the two types of flight, he likes to remember a metaphor his friend, who also pilots both, once offered that likened airplane flying to the structure and order of marching band music.

“With hot air ballooning,” on the other hand, “it’s pure jazz.”

“You can have a destination in mind, you can start off in a known location,” Jordan said, “but in the meantime, you can improvise and float around, go on little tangents with different wind patterns and over different natural features.”

Jordan explained that the farms, industries, towns, estates and landscape features of the Northwest Corner and broader region can make it feel like floating above history. “It just brings your hometown to life in a way you otherwise wouldn’t know about,” he said.

Despite having flown balloons in faraway places, Jordan maintained that “there’s no place like home.”

To find out more and to book a flight, visit spiritballooning.com

A summer 2023 flight where all three pilots participated, each piloting a different balloon.Madi Long