resulted in a late Partial Ellipsis Of The Sun... but also in these wonderful images of the playa and the journey there. [Take the Fernley exit off I-80 in far northwestern Nevada and head north on a one-lane-each-way road.]
The playa varies in elevation only .02 inches across the up to 12-mile wide, 40-mile long, desert feature:
Being "on playa" is quite an experience. . .Keep your white/limestone-colored dogs close at all times out on the evaporative gypsum and selenite salts:
Salt Lake and environs:
View from the Salt Palace:
People at Burning Man are quite flexible; one might even say they are playa-ble.
These words from John Mcphee's Basin and Range say it all:
"This Nevada terrain is not corrugated, like the folded Appalachians, like a tubal air mattress, like a rippled potato chip.
This is not--in that compressive manner--a ridge and valley situation.
Each range here is like a WARSHIP standing on its own, and the Great Basin is an ocean of loose sediment with these mountain ranges standing in it as if they were members of a fleet without precedent, assembled at Guam to assault Guam. . .
Animals tend to be content with their home ranges and not to venture out across the big dry valleys.The fauna in the high ranges are quite distinct from one another. Animals are isolated like Darwin's finches in the Galapagoes.
THESE RANGES ARE TRULY ISLANDS."
Ahh, such extensive, pulling apart, stretching, expansive writing, Mr. McPhee!
Those last words in capital letters resonated with me while at Burning Man. We were at this old, old beach, in a now-waterless expanse of alkaline salts, trying to find a way to "swim" to shore and out of isolation. . .
Until next week and the fossil limestone "forests" near Kunming City, China, and in Denver, Colorado.
Play-a-long, would you please?
Here are three more images from the journey:
Best night's sleep on this little cot on the playa!
Steph
Word Woman
Some of the art at Burning Man:
.jpg)
And my art installation upon returning to Colorado:
