Monday, September 06, 2004

Day 8: Burning Man Festival, Black Rock City, Nevada

Diane: What was the final verdict? Burning Man was a blast as long as I could ignore the harsh environment imposing its will upon my drying flesh. I loved the rampant creativity. As I explored the various art installations independently, there was always someone interested in participating and experiencing it with me. It was immediate community that appeared, receded, and reappeared round the clock. I didn’t like all the exposed sexuality. I prefer sex to be a private affair. However, you could see the openness brought on for those freed from wearing traditional clothing or any clothing at all or those who painted themselves from head to toe. The wonderful night lights and colors charged the imagination.

We packed up and searched for MOOP on our campsite. MOOP is now part of my vocabulary. It stands for Matter Out Of Place. Part of the permitting process with the Bureau of Land Management includes leave-no-trace standards. Burning Man is the largest Leave-No-Trace event in the world, and so it should come as no surprise that new vocabulary has sprung up. To me, MOOP is conceptual and applies outside the Burning man environment. A gum wrapper dropped unintentionally on the ground is MOOP. But so is a big lush green lawn in the middle of the desert.

We headed out in the opposite direction of the crowds, even farther into the Black Rock desert. Before leaving Black Rock City, we stopped at the BLM ranger’s RV in Center Camp. I wanted directions to the various soakable hot springs. After about 10-15 minutes discussing the area, the one thing we did not get was directions to any hot springs. The ranger said we couldn’t miss it. I guess that’s the BLM’s way of keeping folks away from the hot springs, because we definitely needed directions.

Finally we took off down the playa at about 50 MPH. The playa was several miles wide at this point, but as fate would have it, there was one other vehicle going our way and they sped up in order to overtake us on the track we were traveling. This left us in their dust trail. During Burning Man, I attended a question and answer session by one of the Earth Guardians concerning the geology of the Black Rock desert. One word of advice, he had given was that if you were traveling in the playa and you stopped seeing dust behind you, better stop immediately. Lack of dust indicates wet conditions, which are to be avoided at all costs. Needless to say, today the conditions were VERY DRY and I was left to wonder at someone who had to drive right in front of us, when there were miles and miles of playa to drive on. I suppose each of us is limited by the options we are able to see. One can’t choose a course that one can’t see, hear, feel, or imagine.

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