Black Rock Rendezvous...

so, this desert. owns a piece of my soul. so much has happened there. joy fear release creativity art mine and others. being in or on the desert when no one else is there is amazing. a friend recently shared that she had heard "absolute silence" for the first time. that sensation and feeling is like a comfortable old pair of shoes for me, but slipping back into them is always amazing, like a hug to your spirit. this weekend was special, though. this group of amazing people have this organization to help preserve and protect this amazing desert and area, and they had a shindig. we showed up early and the above picture is the weather we encountered. we huddled down in our little tent trailer, and existed. we chatted, read, spent time together, laughed, joked, and had a great time. we listened to the rain hit the canvas of the trailer. it always seemed louder on the canvas than it did when you had to walk out in it. it probably rained for near eight hours before there was any standing water on the playa, but once there was, it pretty much hung around all weekend...seeing the rivulets and wash outs where the desert chooses to put it's water as it snakes out into the playa is a beautiful thing to watch. here's the water collected in a tarp in the back of our truck at one point:

at some point before the rain started, we found a little lizard, a horned toad, i've heard from a couple of people. he was so cute and man was he cold! i don't think i would like to be a reptile:

at one point, we did seem like the only people on the planet. visibility across the playa was minimal, you couldn't see the mountains on the far side, and there was a feeling of being marooned. here's my sister, loving life in the middle of all this expanse:

later, more people came. this was both a blessing and a curse =) it was amazing to see friends, make new friends, reacquaint with those not seen for awhile, and get to know better those we had seen, but perhaps not known as well. some very awesome friends, eric and lynn, brought some amazing fire toys. the illumishrooms:

this takes creativity! i want to build something like this! with my own design, but this isn't complicated, at least not the design, but it works very well together. eric did this. he's the man. here's his little mini poofer too:

and those are all the pictures. sometimes i wish we could have one of those sieve things like they have in harry potter...where you can wisp out all your favorite memories and put them somewhere for safe-keeping and then string them out and "reinstall" them to relive them again whenever you need a pick-me-up. somehow, i think some folks, however, would become addicted to this. i might even be one of them =) this was definitely one of those weekends! caught up with the major things, at least those i am willing to write about at this moment =) there's always stuff on the horizon, but i need to think about things for awhile first before i share them with folks. i hope you understand.

 ~peace