It Was Indeed a Good Day (and week) at Black Rock

Ladies in the desert. This is a cartoon of a sculpture. You can get an idea of the size by comparing the sculpture to the people on the left.



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Bad Day At Black Rock is a 1955 movie starring Anne Francis and Spencer Tracy. That movie title kept running through my head as I set off on my trip to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada for the 2005 Burning Man Festival.

The Burning Man Festival site is called Black Rock City, billed as the largest temporary city in the world, and appropriately enough constructed in the Black Rock Desert.

Black Rock City is a little over 1400 miles round trip from my home in Everett Washington. I left on Saturday intending to make it to Alturas California that night and then make the 100 mile drive the next day to Black Rock City allowing me to enter the festival at the opening time of 12 midnight on Sunday night.

Things didn't quite work out as planned.

(continued after the pictures)

Maybe next year we can go together.

On the other hand it's probably better sometimes to ride alone. There are some definite advantages to traveling alone. You can concentrate on the place and people you are visiting instead of your significant other/friend(s). Also the nature of Burning Man could add a lot of stress to any relationship. It all depends on who you are traveling with I suppose.

Maybe we'll see each other along the road.

My bad photos of a week long odyssey are below.

One caveat on the photos; they don't do the event justice in any way. A good photographer could give you an impression, but you really need to be there to appreciate the scope and depth. In addition to my general lack of photography skills I thought taking any pictures might trivialize the experience so I didn't take any until Fred (a neighbor of mine on Gestalt Street) encouraged me to. Finally I didn't have a convenient way to carry my camera on my bike...and the very fine Playa dust made me leary of trying to lug it around too much.

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Nice and clean - ready for the road



Monte is sitting in the copilot's seat today.



I've never seen as many bugs as there were in Klamath Falls Oregon. Must of been a hatch going on. They were good sized critters. Sounded like it was raining big heavy raindrops as they pelted the car. I bought a squeegee for 25 cents at a second hand store in Alturas and bottle of window cleaner for the return trip (and there weren't any bugs).





Lot's of bugs. Someone told me these bugs were introduced to eat mosquitoes and then became more of a pest than the mosquitoes. I think they hatch in swampy areas so they aren't even good as fish food.



Where I camped Saturday night when my car broke. Nice Ponderosa pines. The Ponderosa pine has clumps of very long needles and beautiful bark. The bottom branches grow fairly high off the ground. This allows the trees to survive some brush fires that clear out the undergrowth and scrub trees. End result is you have nicely spaced trees that are good for walking or riding a horse through.




This was before I got to a phone. I was 62 miles from anywhere and my car quit in the middle of the night (I was lucky it wasn't in the hot desert and there was a nice camping spot)



No takers.



I stayed at this place when my car broke down in Alturas. It's Nipa's Thai Cafe and Frontier Motel on Main street.



Mint leaves, orange and newspaper...can keep a goofy guy busy for awhile. The cleaning lady told me she liked the doll I left for her when I saw her again on the way back



Hello darling



Newpaper candle (very safe) the flame is made of colored newspaper.



Trying to make a burning man out of newspaper while stuck in Alturas motel. The rules were it had to be only newspaper - no glue or taping allowed.



Bare light bulbs depress me sometimes. Too institutional if you know what I mean.



That's better. Just have to keep an eye on it for potential smoke/fire. It worked fine until I hit the hay and turned off the light.



This hang out spot was right around the corner from my room.



Bird cage at Nipa's




Pretty birds



This red parrot is the official greeter of the parrot house. He loves to bite things and look at you. He's smart.



Green comes after red has checked you out for awhile.




Nipas is cool - Koi, Buddha, Thai food, rooms for 35 bucks with microwave and fridge.



Koi




Alturas is the County seat of Modoc county California. It's on the "wet side" of the Warner Mountains. Black Rock desert is to the East on the "dry side" of the mountains. Alturas has a really nice library, nice people, high desert air, a swimming pool. It looks like it would be a nice place to live. Interesting that the housing real estate bubble seems to have hit that remote town of 3,000 people. They are asking 200K for small cottages that I would estimate are in the 30K range. There isn't much wood for house construction, hence the houses are smallish and the economy isn't booming making some of the neighborhoods and houses a little shabby. It's a nice town but I can't imagine spending 200K for a small house there.



Cattails around Alturas



Monte liked sticking his head out the window



Driving in to Black Rock City



Monte hanging out



These looked like crayons lying on the desert floor. You can't tell from the photo but they are about 6 feet long.



Sand in the air and on my lense at night



Hot mannequin hangout



Psychic Jack



Main tent



Lots of bikes



You can sit at these easals in the main tent and paint or draw. You can listen to music, dance, watch dancers, lay on couches, snuggle, get coffee, people watch, look at pictures etc.



Main tent




See saw in the desert



See saw



See saw



Road to the temple. It's a very touching spot. People leave notes for their loved ones there, say prayers, meditate or just look.



Temple I - It burns on Sunday night. I missed it but Dutch tells me in some ways it's better than the burning man.



Temple II



Temple III



Temple IV



Had a whistle that sounded like a real train



Bacteria car




Head



Head - A person is inside giving out some advice



Two - of thousands of little vehicles



The eagle has landed




Mother and daughter - the footprints were filled with what looked like water at night topped with a flammable substance and ignited. The mother also poured a flame into the daughters hand.



So pretty



They burned these on Saturday night




The man burns on Saturday night. I was in the closest circle for the burning. I could feel the heat of the fire works that proceed the burning and once the man started to flame up. It was an amazing thing. They don't just burn the man. It's a 2 or 3 hour event with drummers, fire breathers, dancers, people on stilts, devils, angels. I was amazed!



One of the coolest things there. This giant head was used as a screen to project peoples faces on to. The people would talk, blink their eyes...and it looked like the giant head was doing it (hard to explain....but very cool and amazing what people would come up with when they talked...poems, thank you's, stories, funny songs...anyone could participate)




One of many amazing things - these huge rocks rotated when people pulled on the ropes at the bottom. The arms are hinged so the rocks start to move horizontal as the piece gains speed (it doesn't go too fast - the rocks weigh several thousand pounds).



Juggling stilt rock pulling man



Let me give you a hand



I'll just step up here and then...



Thank you stilt man



He made it







That's a motorized couch..nice



Main tent



One of a thousand. This one had really good Jimmy Buffett tunes playing



Fire dragon



Hydraulic power for fire dragon



Fire dragon. I talked to the guy who made this...it's amazing. The legs are articulated and it appears to walk and move it's head, shoot fire. He controls it from the chair you see, with his feet and hands - the chair moves up and down. dragon is powered by a cart behind with a V8 motor and hydraulic pump...sound system, hammock. He told me he came up with the design on his own, built this with a few friends, using mostly found materials.



Picture doesn't do it justice but this smoke ring is huge. It's a thousand feet up or so...so you can get an idea of how big it was. Someone was shooting these one day




My desert home



Home II (it's early in the week...notice how clean)



Home III



Me and my bike



Dutch from Petaluma took this pic. He helped build the temple. It's a very intricate structure. Volunteers like Dutch make parts of it during the year and then transport them to BRC for assembly.



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The following are pictures from Northern Nevada and California on my way home Sunday -


Sunset I



Viewmaster like roads



Sunflowers on Sunday in the desert



Sunflower garden



Northwestern Nevada



On the road



Couldn't quit taking pictures of the sunset



Desert, ponderosa pines



Sunset II



Looking down

It was good to go, it's good to be home...



Dusty Sony and a Ponderosa Pine broom/fetish I made (it's like a Zuni or Native American fetish in that it contains the spirit of the ponderosa pine).



Rachel's bike is dusty like everything else I brought.

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On my way South out of Seattle on Saturday afternoon, I stopped at rest stop. I saw a nicely dressed middle aged lady trip and fall while walking down a step. She thought she had broken her leg and couldn't get up. It made me think that no matter what you do there is an element of risk to life. Stay home - risky. Stop at a rest stop - risky. Take a trip - risky. Do something unusual - risky...but no matter what you do you have risk. Might as well go for doing the things you enjoy while you can and not take the ultimate risk of not living your unique and beautiful life to the fullest.

I made it as far as Northern California late Saturday night when my car quit. I was 62 miles from the nearest town - Alturas California. No phones no people around where I was. I spent the night in my tent and in the morning called a tow truck from the fruit inspection station which opened about 8 am.

It's a beautiful area. High desert, lots of stars, nice flat spot to camp and ponderosa pines.

I rode into Alturas, California with the tow truck on Sunday and waited until Monday to find my car wouldn't be fixed until either Tuesday or Wednesday. The timing belt had broken. A second more difficult to repair problem was the bushing in the center of the flywheel had sheared out. Ron's Auto Repair was a good spot to get a car fixed and Ron had me on the road again by Tuesday afternoon.

Alturas is a town of about 3,000 people. Some of the final Indian wars of the 20th century were fought in the area. The leader of the Indian's was named Captain Jack. It's the county seat of Modoc County, the Modoc National Forest and Modoc National Wildlife Refuge (lot's of birds there) are nearby. The Alturas area is a very nice place, on the wetter west side of the Warner Mountain Range. The Playa (dry lake bed) where Black Rock City is located is on the East side of that mountain range. The road leading over the range has a maximum elevation of just over 6000 feet.

I was a bit conflicted about taking any pictures at the Burning Man Festival. I was concerned that photos (particularly crude ones like I take) would trivialize the event.

I was right. The photo's I took don't begin to do justice to the event. There are thousands of things to do and see. Some unbelievably beautiful and impossible to describe unless you see them. On a second note I didn't really try to capture much in any event. There was dust everywhere to gum up your camera, and I didn't feel like lugging my camera everywhere and think about taking pictures rather than just being present.

The experience is total.

Sound, sight, feel, weather, element, emptiness, lack of sleep, hot, cold, sandy...funny, sad, touching. I had a couple of times when it became too intense and had to meditate/breathe to keep from crying.

If I could describe the festival I would say it reminds me of being in a Mad Max movie, Las Vegas, Mardi Gras (sad to think that today), a play, and an individual and participatory art piece. I can't describe it though.

I met a few nice people and 99.9% of the people I saw seemed to be nice too...except for one jerk at the post office. That's a good ratio of nice to jerk in anybody's book.

I would offer a bit of advice to the rude/crude guy in the post office. If what you were doing (making fun of people, being rude, being "funny"?, being agressive, insulting, crude) only makes sense when validated by others on your "team" maybe you are a victim of groupthink or the herd mentality. Think about what it would be like to do those same things as an individual. Would you have the courage to do those things? Could you balance that courage with compassion? Would it "feel" right? I recommend reading some of the material on group think, herd mentality and the transition to abusing others that some people (many people) exhibit when given "power". I have one thing to say to those who can't stand on their own two feet, think for themselves but rather let the government, the Burning Man Community, the military, the crowd, the popular media, a cult etc. guide them - Question Authority Please.

Okay I got that off my chest. It was a touchy subject for me. Two guys camped near me from Cinncinati gave me some post cards they had made. I wanted to mail them to my wife and daughters and the guy in the Black Rock City Post Office was a total jerk. Really mean, not funny and he hurt my feelings. Not so much that I didn't cool off and return and use a well know finger symbol to communicate my thoughts...but the point of some of the "funny"? abuse part of the festival escapes me.

There are people without clothes on. A Thai guy I was talking to in Alturas helped put that in perspective. I was having a conversation with him and an accountant for the motel/cafe. The old accountant was pretty skeptical of the idea of Burning Man...drugs (I told him the event sponsers don't promote or condone there use), stealing/trashing (shouldn't be a problem these are not digger hippies with the price of admission and the cost of getting there...not to say there aren't some poor transient types who would attend..but surviving in the desert takes some prep, and money) and finally the no-clothing deal.

When he brought up the nudity factor I told him I was going to do people a favor and keep my clothes on. The Thai guy said "they are just bodies".

That's a good point. Unless you objectify and or sexualize people...they are just bodies. That was pretty much what I saw was just bodies. There is probably some sexy stuff going on but I'm not in tune with it at this point in my life. It's odd but I've become some kind of self chosen monk. That's probably more than you want or need to know. But I'm quite happy. It's paradoxical that the more you give up the less you desire.

I'd read that 10 to 20 percent of the people there are nekkid to some degree. That sounds about right. I'm sure there is drug use and sex and dancing and rock and roll and all the stuff parents tell kids not to do. One of the philosophies? of the event (at least I'd like to think) is that the 60's live on. Love, peace, kindness and yes sex, drugs and rock and roll were part of that lifestyle.

On the other hand a lot of us 60's hippies grew up and saw the dangers associated with indiscriminate drug use or sexual activity. I was camped next to a woman physician (no drugs or sex that I could see) and sat on the center circle with a Mom and Dad who were professors and their student son and daughter from U.C. Berkeley...they seemed really smart and nice to me.

One last comment on nudity. I can understand the desire to relive the childlike freedom of running around naked. I once answered the door for the neighborhood priest in the nude, embarassing my mother to no end. When I was four clothing was optional. I liked running around naked as much as the next kid. What I don't understand is why people want to ride bikes naked. I've riden bicycles a fair amount, and a good pair of biking shorts can be a lifesaver (chaffing and scrunching of sensitve body parts can put a damper on the old biking spirit).