THAT THING IN THE DESERT

        Last week six of us left a comfortable house near San Francisco to camp in a hot, dust-filled desert. "Insanity", you say?  Yes, definitely, and Burning Man 2019 was well worth it.

    80,000 people gather every year in the forlorn emptiness of NW Nevada to create a city like no other.  A month before there is nothing but the cracked mud of a lake bed and then there is this,

an entire city, everything where there had been nothing. 

    This year's theme was "Metamorphosis". As Pegasus galloped on his towering pedestal (above) he morphed into a flying machine.



 



The Man, in the center of it all, spent the week emerging from a winding blue-lit chrysalis.

 




At the end of the seventh day The Man was glorified in fireworks

and sanctified in flame. 

     After the burn, we clean up and go home. The tents, sculptures, and Porto-pottis disappear and the Black Rock Desert becomes a pristine lake bed again.
    Nobody cleans up like Burners. Our vanishing act is a tribute to one of our city's ten unique principles, "Leave no trace". 
    The other nine have to do being nice, things like
"share what you have" and "radical self-expression".  I'll tell you more about them in the next episode.

You gotta have a bike to get around this place. One-eyed monster costumes are optional.

   




  The six of us are family and friends with Miami roots. Three of us live in Gainesville.

            Our crew: Ward, GT, Dylan, Tina, Natalia, and Ian

    We shared our lack of artistic talent by setting up a "Very Bad Portrait Studio" every morning in front of The Man.  
     The odd thing is that all of our customers liked our lousy drawings. Many swore they'd have them framed when they got home.  

 Ward, Tina, Dylan, & Natalia running our "studio" and yes, the man behind Ward forgot to get dressed that day.

   Officer Howell, with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, loved his portrait.  We became friends and he let me examine the body armor that he's worn for 29 years.  In all that time he's only been shot at once. The officer loves B'man and said, after he retires next spring,  he's coming back as a civilian.

Lindsay and Micoh in typical Burning Man gear. She wore pearls, a red apron, and black duct tape.



     
Ian killed it with this 
outfit.
 
   

  And he REALLY killed it with this bad portrait!

    It takes a lot to run the third largest city in Nevada. This one is staffed by 10,000 workers. Most are volunteers and we jumped in to help in various capacities. We served a baristas, stage hands, and PR wonks.

    It was a thrill to be sharing it all with my sons, Dylan and Ian.
At night we would explore the playa (open desert festooned with sculptures) on illuminated bikes.    

     Pedaling through the pulsating Time Tunnel was one electrified ride.


    All around us were mutant vehicles edging across the sand, each one a loud rolling party that  continued 'til dawn.

    By day many of the 400 art cars plied the Playa as well. You could hook your bike to this one and ride as long as you liked.


      Dylan and I got to tour on the "Movement Of Jah People", a former double-decker bus. Riding on the front bumper (the lion's tongue) was almost a life-changing life experience.
 

    Half the people in Black Rock City were on a sleep all day/party all night schedule. The Grove Guy isn't like that. He awoke at dawn, a good time to shoot pictures and talk to God.

 

    He (and sometimes a she) always had thoughtful things to say. When I get back to Florida I may have one installed in my home.

    It seemed impossible to see all of the art, there was just so much of it spread out over miles of desert.


     A winding ladder took you up into the belly of this former tad pole. 

    The life-sized mammoth below was dreamed up by local girl scout, Tahoe Mack, after she learned these creatures once roamed near Nevada's Tule Springs. It was created by artist Luis Valero Roco using metal collected by the spring's clean up crew.

        Like many of the sculptures this one will be finding a new home this week. Tahoe's dream will be permanently placed in the state's Ice Age Fossil Beds State Park in North Las Vegas.

      The desert afternoons were brutally hot. We chose to spend many of them in Reverbia's tent 
listening to live music. 

And if it wasn't hot enough, you could always go out into the Playa to see the Silver Man spinning fire tornados into the sky.

     The heat never let up at Burning Man.  At the 24/7, eight-day event there were always exciting things to do. I'll tell you about more of them in the next picture-packed episode.

Still shaking off the dust in California,
The Grove Guy

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