Rain closed the gates at Burning Man, but this year at least it was before too many people became stranded and, not being nearly the deluge of last year, they reopened before they were “officially” open…from my vicarious perch in the mountains I had high hopes that the Gerlach webcam might keep me up to date on how things looked in town but instead of their once-a-minute year round broadcast it was only once every two or three hours at best and by Monday

they’d zoomed in on a screensaver of the playa showing nothing relevant as as the BM CSAs say “Please note: this camera is maintained by one hard-working Burning Man Staffer living in Gerlach, who not only supports Burning Man’s tech needs there, but also supports Gerlach residents [ed. note; half of whom are now Burners who’ve taken over the town and driven real estate and rental prices up to Bay Area highs] with the WiFi service we provide for them year-round. Given the demands on his time, it may take a while to get the camera back up and running when it goes down, which it does occasionally. Your patience is appreciated.” It was at least sort of up long enough to see that Willey was cleaning up at the gas station before they figured out a ‘solution’ to avoiding showing the shitshow a-go-go that I have heard about from the locals for years…

so zoom in on Black Rock City, yeah, that’s gotta be what everybody’s interested in! Dust by day and distant flickering party lights all night long.  Speaking of lights out on that far horizon, however, Dave and Kevin’s project was up and running, as K. explained; “I am Kevin Kelly, part of the geezer gang putting up a mile-long art installation at BM this year. I’m 72, David Rumsey is 80, and Lloyd Kahn is just about 90 (!). I’ve been to about 10 burns (first one in 1995), and I made the first book about Burning Man around 1998. David has been to a few, but this is the first one for Lloyd. Our art project is The Speed of the Earth, a near-mile long line of strobe lights that will create a comet zooming across the playa east to west at the speed of the earth’s rotation, so you can feel the earth rotate. It will be on the west side of the playa running all day and night”.  Below on the left Kevin with Andy Ellerton and one of the thirty LED

airport strobes built by Andy’s Airport Lighting Company for the project which Dave along with Seth and Sonny Roché installed last week. If a person checks in on the BM webcam [particularly at night] and is lucky one might catch the lights moving from right to left, bright and minimal, out beyond Man and Temple. Or better yet go to Lloyd’s insta account…an elegant piece.

Unfortunately it’s occurring in an environment way too dense for me to ever consider visiting

from up here in the mtns., where we wander with dogs before consuming

open face buffalo burgers

with a view.

We now make it up the creek pretty much every day, finding boletes of various persuasions

to bring home for drying

or feasting. One half of a king [shown] made for an entire meal plus garnished the next night’s

burgers, leaving the other half as a side dish when Michael and Nancy came for a long pleasant dinner with talk of books, illuminative local news and a Rocky Ford melon for dessert.  Um.

Creekwalking, trying to resist gathering too many more of the emergent funghi

as the extended – but gentle – rainy season keeps them fruiting wonderfully.

So we make our rounds of creek, ‘shroom cleaning, studio afternoons,

and dinners on the [cooling – feels autumnal already] porch while all along

the BM’s Gerlach spycam remains frustratingly discreet.  But given there was a 5 1/2 hour wait to get through the gate BEFORE either the rain or the official opening I imagine there’s quite a gridlock to conceal out there by now. Not here…here all is clear,

even if Out West…

Patience, patience…dust on the desert.