THE BLACK ROCK DESERT
PAGE 1 - JUNE 2000 WORK WEEKEND
PAGE 2 - JUNE 2000 continued
I first visited Nevada's Black Rock Desert as a participant in the Burning Man festival, and the next spring went back on my own to become a volunteer with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the federal agency that stewards the Black Rock. Simply put: I love this place. It's as desert as you can get: 400 square miles of absolutely, staggeringly flat alkali mud (aka playa). People put bricks on their accelerators, climb on the roof of their cars, and drive for 20 miles steering rudimentarily with their feet - there's nothing to hit out there. Nothing at all, period, in fact. The complete sterility of the Black Rock makes it one of the free-est places that the earth could hold - everything built or done there represents a beginning, a chance for new forgiveness. Paradoxically, by nature the Black Rock is one of the most unforgiving places imaginable, hot and dry and windy with dust-storms where you can't see your hand two feet in front of your face. Hanging out there is a challenge. I love this place.
All photos this section M. Bilbo.
The Black Rock Desert (looking east at the Black Rock itself): gaw-damn, it's flat out here.
Tracks are imprinted in the playa surface until the winter rains, when the Black Rock reverts to being the lakebed that it really is. In the spring it dries out and all the tracks are erased. Real life should be like this.
Life on the playa: always bring shelter with you or you'll be one sunburned lobster mofo at the end of the day.
Camp of BLM volunteers, Little High Dry micro-playa in the hills behind the Black Rock.
Little High Dry. Gaw-damn, it's flat and white out here.
Micro-playa (right), main playa (left in distance), BLM volunteer (center).