Wednesday is a great day in the event, for at this time days are behind and ahead of you here and one is deepest within the flow of events. I learned that a high resolution image of Black Rock City would be taken Thursday just before noon. This was fantastic as a similar image had been made the previous year, another reason I was sad to have not made it as such an image had never been obtained before. I had made inquiries in past years about having the space station crew obtain some hand held digital camera images, but with only two people aboard the maintenance work load dominates their schedules. What the IKONOS satellite can obtain is much better than any hand held camera can get, in color at about a meter resolution. I expected my large green plastic ground cover circled by our tents and cars to be easily visible. People in scattered locations across the Tent City prepared little pictures and messages with whatever dark materials as were at hand, doubtless many a subtle scrap of visual graffiti was be directed skywards at the appointed time. Fortunately the weather prospects appeared excellent for the rest of the week, although the gustiness of the playa asserted itself widely this day.
Wednesday was my day of finding people I knew to be at the event, after missed connections the previous day. 'WOW' camp, near me on the Esplanade, is where Jane Heaven, a radio personality whose voice has graced the airwaves of KPFA for many years, was staying. Her recent programming about Burning Man on her show brings the spirit of the event to the airwaves as the vulgar commercial media never could. Besides her serene persona and her great taste in music, she has a voice which fits her name, joyous and positive.
This year among those present at the event were a number of prominent names in the modern Planetarium industry. One individual who has recently moved to a production position in an innovative television channel was camped near 'Media Mecca', near the colony established by the 'Current TV' cable channel. I found Ed Lantz, whose camp he was part of was still in the process of setting itself up. I appeared along with some others just in time to help in a shelter setup, so I cheerfully lent a hand helping hold up the center of a silver 'fold up' yurt made of taped together slabs of wall insulation. A flow of people able and willing to help out is one of the traditional aspects of participation in the event, and it felt good to be useful.

During conversations after the setup the winds picked up and a sense of alarm seemed to be gather in the area. Moving outside, I beheld a towering mass of dust bearing down upon us, packed together in a dark turbulent mass with ragged edges writhing while brightly back lit from the Sun behind. The cloud didn't look like a dust devil to me then, however that is what it turned out to be a massive example of. It rose like a whirling totem pole and wound the very air about itself and steadily tore a path across Black Rock City. The whirlwind tore asunder encampments, wrecked art, and redistributed uncountable loose objects. We were then engulfed in it, howling dust laden winds noisily forcing itself through pathways of cloth and metal. Dense dust roared through where I stood near Media Mecca to the point of 'white out' conditions limiting visibility to a few yards.

I used my sun cover sheeting as protection, wrapping my head and upper body to form a tiny cleaner refuge. Shortly the dust devil had passed, and I took off on foot to find a view of the thing. It assumed more of a tornado shape after it passed us, resembling close up one of those wide Oklahoma tornadoes with rotating irregularly detailed yet solid looking 'trunks'. A thin spiral dust cloud seemed to be wound about the vertical main mass, quickly being fed in. It was a similar experience to one during my first Burning Man in 1997, when a tent was scooped up by such a passing cyclone and carried high.
I obtained a few photographs of what ended up being the most prominent dust devil during the event it as it whirled its way to the north. This, along with regional dust storms that day, turned out to be the major weather related event that week. One such storm roared across my camp, and upon arriving there to check things out I saw tears developing in my mylar tent cover, although of limited and repairable length thanks to the many strips of plastic tape backing every seam. After a few minutes of work the covering was mended, as it remained for the rest of the event.
The Man was magnificent as always, but the design included a vertical lift which brought the effigy up and down in response to voting by passers by, in dedicated kiosks, on the predominance of the two elements of the theme for this year, 'Hope' which raised the Man, and 'Fear' which lowered him. The Man was mostly submerged early in the event as the votes apparently ran on the gloomy side. The pedestal entrance bore a magnificent series of paintings by Alex Gray characteristic of his intricate anatomically detailed yet visionary work. For a time a dust storm shrieked across by the Man, people wearing masks riding laboriously against the wind while fading into the golden luminous mist. The wind and dust were awful near sunset Wednesday, and for a time I cowered in my tent listening to the mylar crinkling loudly under the constant buffeting. The winds died down after nightfall, and I emerged to see Black Rock City at 'full power' in the calm amazingly clear air.

Passing through Burning Man one sees many things which invite examination, but the sounds are just as intriguing. This year many kinds of music could be heard, all giving way to one another as one moves along. A roaring drumbeat merges with background merriment, interspersed with the sounds of crowds in the act of breaking into cheers. It is a joyous surging sound, a composite of many people having a great time. We are letting go of our outside existence and reaching for something else in this distant haven.

The 'Uchronia' structure was always a prominent landmark at night, generally lit a brilliant green from the outside. Giant shadows of people dancing near the floodlight traveled across the flatter sides, with more lighting of different colors appearing from the interior in different directions and throbbing along with the music. The interior was packed with people dancing for all they were worth, with some even having climbed up the sloping walls, against posted warnings, to find perches above the crowd. In some ways the wooden structure looked more surrealistic at night. Often the interior was almost unlit, with violet and green soft lighting fading in and out just enough to remind you of the surroundings.
The night time was generally a time of calm weather, quite cool but never quite enough to prompt me to use the sleeping bag. A single sheet was plenty to keep me warm each night, with the insulation allowing the coolness to persist in my tent a couple hours longer than elsewhere, invaluable for getting sleep. Later in the event the weather was strikingly calm, with the only dust being kick up being due to human traffic, never climbing but forming a ground fog like layer of steadily renewed dust settling down more or less in place.
Thursday the weather was beautiful and nearly dust free. The water trucks steadily sprayed water on the main roads to inhibit dust, followed by people running into the water stream for quick showers. This year the bathrooms were plentiful and in generally good shape, although there were shortages of toilet paper later on. I brought household toilet paper for emergencies, and moistening two fingers allows one to easily separate the 2 layers to both double your effective amount of paper and conform to the 'single ply' requirements for use in these toilets. As good deeds I left toilet paper in the stalls when I could for the benefit of the next few users.
This was the day I found Carter, AKA Mistress Barbie, and others in the thriving Tethered Aviation Camp. We met, briefly rode about on bicycles, then visited with his camp mates. I then found out the location of Dr. Lizard, who was buried in the middle of an Esplanade block clear across the playa this year. I managed to see him, although since he was part of a larger camp he had duties which one coming to visit randomly had to work around. His distinctive thick tubed dome decorated with toy reptiles and surrounding large purple plastic provision cases were familiar sights in years past, but his Frank Zappa reminiscent facial hair was now shaved off. While I lingered we talked about people we wish were still going, then I moved on into the brilliant flatness beyond.
Wandering about the playa, attractions would grow out of the emptiness and make their sensory statements. A colorful sea animal like balloon with barbed arms swayed in the wind, giving a burst of color to a sea of ivory monotony.

A pair of hands arising from the ground were sturdily fashioned from metal piping, constantly being climbed upon. While a dust storm raged, someone raised her arms in exuberance at the experience. Later in the week people began painstakingly winding ropes and coils first through their individual metal fingers then to join the hands themselves to each other.
A large metal platform I later came upon was apparently built for its resonate qualities when struck, and people were constantly tapping and pounding away on it in complex interacting rhythms which wavered and shifted with the energy and styles of passing groups of performers.

Time and again one was drawn to the vast 'Uchronia' which loomed above the playa far and wide. From different angles, night or day, one could get different visual associations from the varied aspects of this massive structure. Sometimes it looked like a decaying remnant of a ship exposed on a dry sea bed, sometimes it resembled a skeletal remnant of a Giger inspired cavernous spaceship. Inside the wooden structure seemed to flow as if they were influenced by magnetic lines of force, with several column like bundles of denser structure fanning out and spreading to intertwine with other such load bearing areas overhead, creating a latticework like that of a chaotic wooden spider web. At times the dust storms blew through the Uchronia, it being but a latticework of wood, and the sunlight shown through the gaps in the construction in many parallel beams as in a forest canopy. I obtained an image at the moment a beautiful star burst pattern played from the hidden sun through the arching walls and the dust.

The Sun sets on the playa as an extended 'fade out' of ones surroundings, with your shadow merging with that of the western mountains as its vague border sweeps by. Full sunlight persists briefly in a narrowing band of playa to the east, providing a brief but strikingly unnatural looking appearance. The mountains in that direction stay lit for quite awhile, then display the ragged shadows of ranges to the west. The last coppery traces of sunlight leave the mountain crests as the dark border of the shadow of the Earth itself rises in the sky behind them. The coming of night brings release from constant precautions against the sun, off goes the sunshade and hat to be dropped off at camp. The indigo veil of night spreads from the eastern horizon, arching imperceptibly overhead until daylight persists only in the western twilight. Things which only come out at night emerge across Black Rock City.

Considerable and varied lighting methods are brought there, adorning practically every structure along the Esplanade as well as many prominent landmarks and towers across the tent City. Speeding into the darkness out there on a bicycle is a visually beautiful experience. Pillars of incandescent and laser light pierce the surrounding darkness. Colored glows surround major groupings of lights, which in turn blaze from a multicolored mosaic of a ground cover spanning the encircling Tent City. The luminous identity of Black Rock City flood the night with luscious color, pulsing and flowing with the combined exuberance of many. This vast luminous carpet roars its living energy into the night, chugging and singing the sum total of audible expressions and echoing upon itself in a rippling pulsing cacophony. It is as if great Victorian era engines were furiously straining to power all of this.

A round 'cake shaped' fairly dense 3D volume of many lights capable of synchronized use in varied colors attracted attention even from a distance. Circular waves like that of a sheet of rubber being bounced upon spread out from the center giving way to random variations with beautiful colors emerging in layers from the center.
From the furthest point in the '12 o'clock' direction at the perimeter fence the entire event spanned the horizon well within ones field of view, and the sonic emanations were muffled to the point of sometimes fading under the sounds of local winds. With my pair of 'infinity' glasses which bring my vision to crisp focus for stargazing, it was like seeing a city from an airliner, or our galaxy from well on the way to the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy. I looked up and found to my delight the 'dome' of light pollution from the event had less effect than previous years, the stars shining nearly as they should although not nearly as dark as at the Sierras. The Cygnus region of the Milky Way glimmered like a carelessly spilled trail of phosphorescent powder against the jeweled starry tapestry filling the skies, many dimmer stars crowding the gaps between the brighter ones. The Andromeda Galaxy, a near twin of our own Milky way, glowed like a ghostly oval overhead.

The concept of space at Burning Man is of several kinds. There is the distant space just described, glimpsed far away from well beyond the carpet of lights, a look between the man made and the infinite. Inside Black Rock City there is space filled with large things around and over you in many places including elaborate shade structures and tents. The overall shape of the space one perceives from the perception of a moving bicycle out in the open is almost like one living in the 'flatland' of Edwin Albert Abbott's trans dimensional story. Riding a bicycle out there is like flying in two dimensions, describing paths of free will across a vast smoothness as unencumbered and yet as limited as ants in a vast but thin flat 'ant farm' laid on its side.

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