– Photos by Ross Harried

From the quiet work of early morning setup to the careful staging before flight, the Monroe Balloon & Bands Festival offered a graceful start to the final day of spring. Through the lens of Ross Harried of Second Crop Creative, the scenes unfold with color, patience and anticipation. Balloons lay stretched across the grass before slowly rising into form, while crews moved with practiced coordination and spectators watched the day take shape.

Then came liftoff. One by one, the balloons climbed above Green County, drifting over farms, fields and small towns under a splendid late-spring sky. Harried’s photographs capture both the scale of the balloons and the stillness of the countryside below, turning a regional festival into a quiet celebration of flight, community and the beauty of seeing familiar ground from a different height. For a few quiet minutes, Green County seemed to lift with them.