Black Rock City is laid out using a semi-circular grid system. The main roads are numbered and are oriented toward the Man, which is at the center of Burning Man. The circular roads are in alphabetical order with names based on the theme of the year. Say the theme was Wildlife, A street might be Aardvark, B street Baboon, etc.

The well laid out street system makes it easy to get around— in the beginning— during the day. The story changes at night when lack of light, stolen signs, liberal doses of free alcohol and mass chaos seems to rule, especially later in the week when the full 70,000 plus people are present. Then, it’s easy to get lost. Throw in a zero visibility dust storm and it is almost impossible not to. Common sense and Burning Man tell you to stay put.

I was lost for an hour once during such a storm. We had gone out to watch a burn, which was scheduled at dusk in the far reaches of the Playa near the apex of the map shown above. As the fire burned down, a huge dust storm hit, leaving Peggy, our friend Beth, and me— along with a few thousand other Burners and mutant vehicles to find our way home. It bordered on scary, made more so by large mutant vehicles appearing out of nowhere. When the storm cleared enough to get our bearings, we found we had walked in a huge circle out on the Playa. We returned to camp caked in dust and exhausted. Now, I carry a compass.

You don’t need a dust storm to get lost, however. Here’s a story I related earlier this week in one of my comments: A young man drove up from San Francisco to Burning Man. He was a first timer, a virgin Burner eager to get out and explore. He parked his car, quickly set up camp, and headed off to play. When he returned to his camp later that night, he discovered that someone had stolen his car, his tent, his food and all of his gear. He reported his situation to the Burning Man staff and they found the unfortunate fellow a ride back to SF. End of story.

But not quite. A few days after the event, he received a call from BMO. His car, his tent, his food, and all of his gear had been found— right where he had left them. That was how lost he had been. If this seems a bit far-fetched, consider the following photos.

After the above story and photos, it might seem that it would be impossible to get away from the crowds. Actually it’s easy, assuming you are willing to head out into the Playa. Even the area surrounding the Man is relatively unoccupied unless a major event is taking place. Very few make it to the outer boundaries. Showing up early in the week or leaving late also reduces the crowds that peak on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

NEXT POST: I’ll take you for a walk through Black Rock City.

Bone reviews the story of how he was found.

Bone’s Perspective 

I didn’t plan on seeing the world and becoming famous. Once I was part of a horse located just above the hoof. I had no freedom; I had no glory. Wherever the horse went, I went also, a mere slave to his desires. During the summer this meant carrying greenhorn tourists into the backcountry of the mountains above Lake Tahoe. The added pounds gave me bone-jarring headaches. Then the horse died; I like to fantasize that a large bear with big teeth and sharp claws ate him.  Hopefully he ate the tourist as well.

Whatever happened, I was free to be me, Bone. Yes, that’s right, Bone is my name. A kindly coyote picked me up and carried me to a high meadow filled with Corn Lilies. It was there that I discovered my Zen-like nature as I meditated through the seasons. I was alone except for a mouse that came by and nibbled on me occasionally. That hurt. In fact, it interrupted my meditation and scarred me for life; you can still see teeth marks. I blame all of my subsequent bad behavior on that flea-bitten miscreant.

My annoyance at the mouse, however, was minimal in comparison to my anger at the large two-legged creature who yanked me from my meadow home and begin yelling I was trash as he ran down the trail in pursuit of another two-legged creature.  Can you imagine the insult? I had no way of knowing that this was the beginning of my world travels or that the two creatures, Curt Mekemson and Tom Lovering, would become my servants. But read on as Curt provides his perspective on my discovery. He had no idea of the treasure he had found. –Bone

Bone has backpacked through the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range numerous times— but that is only a small part of his adventures.

NOTE: I’ve told this story before on my blog, but in the interest of bringing my more recent followers up-to-date, I am repeating the tale. Enjoy. –Curt

It was the summer of 1977 and my wife was divorcing me. She had dropped the bomb shortly after we had spent six-months traveling in the South Pacific and East Asia. Apparently, I lacked in stability or at least in the desire to pursue the Great American Dream. She was right of course. I had absolutely zero desire to tie myself to an eight-hour a day job and a large house in the suburbs. None of this made the divorce easy, however.

To keep my mind occupied, I was working on the route for the Fourth Annual Sierra Trek, a challenging nine-day 100-mile backpack trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that I had created as a pledge-based fund-raiser for the American Lung Association in Sacramento.

“So what’s your problem?” my friend Tom Lovering asked over a beer at the Fox and Goose Restaurant. He’d been-there-done-that with divorce and dated a number of women since. Tom owned Alpine West, an outdoor/wilderness store in Sacramento, and sponsored the Sierra Trek. He was the ultimate available bachelor and planned on remaining that way. I had persuaded him to go backpacking with me for six days to preview part of the new route. Our plan was to start near Meek’s Bay, Lake Tahoe and work our way southward 70 miles following the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail.

Tom had invited his girlfriend, Lynn, and Lynn was bringing along her friend Terry. Terry was nice, not my type.

“I have a friend named April who wants to go backpacking,” Tom offered. “Why don’t I invite her to go as well? Maybe you two will hit it off.” The implication was that this would help me get over my wife.

A friend drove the five of us up to Meeks Bay. April was gorgeous and Tom was right. I followed her long legs and short shorts up the trail. My gloomy focus on the Soon-to-Be-Ex faded like a teenager’s blue jeans. Hot feet and screaming fat cells were even more potent in forcing me to live, or at least suffer, in the moment. As usual I’d done nothing to physically prepare for the first backpack trip of the year and I was paying the price.

We climbed a thousand feet and traveled six miles to reach our first night’s destination at Stony Ridge Lake. I crashed while Tom broke out some exotic concoction of potent alcohol. After consuming enough of his ‘medicine’ to persuade my fat cells they had found Nirvana, I fired up my trusty Svea stove and started cooking our freeze-dried dinner. It wasn’t hard. Boil water, throw in noodles, add a packet of mystery ingredients, stir for ten minutes and pray that whatever you have created is edible. That night it didn’t matter.

Afterwards, we headed for our beds. The next day would be long. I slid into my down-filled mummy bag and looked up at what seemed like a million stars. There were no city lights or pollution to block my view and the moon had yet to appear. I traced an imaginary line from the Big Dipper and found the North Star. It seemed far too faint for its illustrious history. A shooting star briefly captured my attention. Thoughts of divorce, short shorts, the next day’s route, a rock digging into my butt, and sore feet jostled around in my mind for attention.

Sleep finally crept into the bag and captured me.

I awoke with a Mountain Jay screeching at me from the safety of his perch in a Lodgepole Pine. A faint light announced the morning, but the sun still hid behind the mountains on the east side of Lake Tahoe. It was frosty cold and I burrowed into my bag, pretending for a few more moments that I didn’t have to get up. Nature drove me out.

I could ignore the faint light; I could ignore the Jay, and I could even ignore the stirrings of my companions, but I couldn’t ignore my insistent bladder. Among muttered good mornings I wandered off into the woods and peed on a willow near where I had seen a coyote the evening before. I was marking my territory.

Back in camp Tom had his stove going. Lynn smiled at me. She, too, was a tall, good-looking woman. Terry had yet to emerge from her cocoon and April had replaced me out in the woods. I heard a kersplash in Stony Ridge Lake and turned to watch as ripples spread out and announced a trout had snatched its buggy breakfast. Briefly I regretted that I had left my fishing pole at home. The sun was now bathing the peaks above us in gentle light; ever so slowly it worked its way down the mountain.

Instant coffee, instant oatmeal and a handful of dried fruit made up breakfast. All too soon it was time to pack my gear and urge my still stiff muscles up the trail.

The troops were in high spirits. The sheer beauty of Desolation Wilderness demanded it. Our day would take us up to Phipps Pass, down to the Velma Lakes, across the Rubicon River, up Rockbound Valley, over Mosquito Pass and end at Lake Aloha, some 13 miles from Stony Ridge Lake. We took a few minutes to make sure our camp was clean. Almost immediately we began to climb. Flashes of blue lupine, multi-colored columbine and cheerful monkey flowers eased our way along the switch back trail. My pace of travel provided ample opportunity for appreciation. I caught a brief smell of mint at one point and wild onion at another.

We passed by two more small lakes and began our ascent of Phipps Pass. By this point I had moved in to granny gear and could hear my heart pounding in its cage, wanting to escape. Each step was a test of will. I kept moving. I had long since learned that the difficulty of starting outweighed the benefits of stopping. One step at a time I reached the top. A spectacular view rewarded my effort.

Peaks still buried under snow stretched off into the distance. The Sierra is a baby mountain range, the child of plate tectonics. Once, ancient seas covered the area. Volcanic activities left behind vast pools of subterranean granite. Crashing continental and oceanic plates lifted the granite into spectacular fault-block mountains, steep on the east and gentler on the west. The Ice Age brought glaciers that carved peaks, scooped out basins and left behind rocky moraines.

We stopped to catch our breath and enjoy the view.  Soon we would begin our descent toward Velma Lakes, but first we worked our way around Phipps Peak. A series of lakes came into view. Tom and I immediately began to debate which was which.

“And you expect us to depend on your trail finding skills?” Lynn asked. Tom whipped out his topographic map.

“See,” he said decidedly, allowing a note of triumph to enter his voice. While we were the best of friends, this didn’t eliminate an element of alpha male competition between us. He, after all, was the owner of an outdoor-wilderness store, and I, after all, was the leader of wilderness treks. I glanced at his map and an impish grin filled my face.

“Your map is upside down, Tom.” Oops.

We did agree that my decision to detour from the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail and go through Rockbound Valley was a good one. Heavy snow still covered the northern and eastern side of the mountains. It was unlikely to melt by the time of the Trek. The Trekkers would have enough challenge backpacking 13 miles on their second day out. They didn’t need to slog through five miles of snow while muttering unprintable thoughts about me.

We started our descent into the Velmas carefully. It is hard not to think, “Oh boy, down hill!” after a hard climb. But going down is much tougher on your body than climbing. Stepping down is a form of free fall. Velocity and weight are focused on the joints of your legs and feet. Adding a 40 to 50-pound pack increases the problem. It is easy to twist a knee or sprain an ankle, especially at the beginning of the season. And that was what happened. By the time we reached Middle Velma, April was limping.

“I stepped on a loose rock and slipped,” she explained in obvious pain.

While April soaked her foot in the cold lake water and broke out an Ace Bandage, Tom and I mulled over whether to go on or hike out. We arrived at a compromise. Lynn would hike out with April to Emerald Bay and the two of them would stay at a motel. They would rejoin Tom, Terry and me at Echo Lake some 18 miles down the trail.

Coming up: Part 2 of Bone’s discovery. There are raging rivers, kamikaze mosquitoes, and naked ladies jumping. You won’t want to miss it. In the meantime, here are two more photos reflecting Bone’s subsequent journeys.

Bone visit the Tropic of Cancer…

And checks out the 45th Parallel. (Bone is above the 5.)

NEXT BLOGs:

Friday: More unusual structures at Burning Man including a Bird Trap Church and a memorial to LSD Guru, Timothy Leary.

Monday: The Coquille River Lighthouse and Bullard’s Beach near Bandon, Oregon.

Wednesday: Bone is discovered: Part II

Our first adventure of the year was to journey off to Alaska where we joined our son Tony, his wife, Cammie and our three grandkids for at the World Ice Carving Championships in Fairbanks Alaska. This carving won first prize and served as the January photo for us.

Each year Peggy and I go through our photos from the past year to create a Family Calendar for our kids, grandkids, brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews. Luckily, the family isn’t too big! We use Apple to produce the calendars, and the company does a beautiful job. It’s a fun review for us— and a job. (grin) I go through the several thousand photos we have taken and pull out a hundred or so. Peggy then goes through the hundred with me and we winnow it down to 12.

I thought it would be fun to share some of the photos with you. They were all included in blogs I posted this year and reflect our journeys. I am not going to limit myself to 12, however! I am going to post 30: 10 today, 10 on Thursday, and 10 on New Year’s Eve. Enjoy.

We took the Alaska Railroad from Anchorage to Fairbanks, which provided a wonderful opportunity for sightseeing and photography.

These Birch, which I rendered in black and white were along the way.

As was this view of Mt. Denali. We were ever so lucky. Having lived in Alaska for three years, I know how rare it is to capture the mountain on a clear day.

Further along, we came on these mountains.

The ice carvings were marvellous. This one was called ‘First Breath.”

This one, by a Russian carver, “Yahoo!”

This was titled “Stuck-up,” which seemed quite appropriate for a cat.

Flying back to Anchorage, I looked out the window and caught this photo of the Alaska Range.

Back in Anchorage, we watched sled dog races. Warm temperatures meant they had to put down snow for the races. And it meant that this snow sculpture of a native Alaskan was melting. I still found it beautiful.

I’ve been a little neglectful on reading blogs and responding to comments the past few days. My apologies. America has just gone through one of the nastiest elections in its history. And the American people have spoken, in a way I never expected them to. I know they were voting their frustration, a frustration that was caused in many ways by the very same people they just voted back into office.There is a reason why our government has been so dysfunctional for the past eight years. It was grounded in just-vote-no-and-screw-the-consequences. Let the nation go up in flames rather than work together and compromise to build a better nation. Challenge where the President was born, regardless of proof, instead of meeting him half way across the aisle as he offered again and again. And never, never let him have a victory. Now these folks are saying don’t be bitter, we have to work together. Right.

Well, my sense of humor is a little low now, so I am feeling a little ouchy. One good thing I did see was that 18-25 year olds voted for Hillary in all but five states. Our future may be in good hands. I suspect we will be hearing from young people a lot over the next few months. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what lessons our children have learned over the past year. I came up with ten.

Ten Lessons this Election Taught Our Children:

1. Rudeness and bullying are okay. Being polite is for losers. Call people who disagree with you names. Call them criminals. Threaten to throw them in jail. Threaten them with lawsuits.
2. Sexual harassment is okay. It is okay to denigrate women and seduce married women. Boys will be boys, right. Threaten to sue women who dare to complain, call them liars. Make sure that women are afraid to complain when they have been harassed or raped.
3. Don’t worry about financial obligations. If you can get away with paying someone nothing or low wages, great. You are not bad, just smart. If worse comes to worse, go bankrupt and stiff all of the people who have worked for or with you. Again, that’s not being bad, just smart. Besides, it’s a great tax write off.
4. In fact, don’t pay taxes, especially if you are wealthy. It’s not criminal; it’s smart. Let losers such as the middle class and low-income people pick up your share.
5. Our military stinks. The solution is to fire all of our generals. Americans, such as John McCain, who end up as Prisoners of War, are losers. A smart person would have never been caught.
6. A major solution to unemployment is to do away with environmental protection. Global warming is a myth. Let’s go back to coal as the solution to America’s energy needs.
7. It’s perfectly okay to be a racist. Build massive walls around America. Send millions of Mexican Americans back to Mexico. Block people from Islamic countries from coming into America. Challenge where America’s first black president was born, again and again, regardless of proof. The innocent are guilty until proven otherwise.
8. There is nothing wrong with a nation who once threatened our nation with nuclear destruction, who has been our sworn enemy for close to a century, and is once again reaching for world domination, to interfere with our political process in America. There is nothing wrong with a presidential candidate inviting such interference.
9. There are no consequences related to lying. Truth is relative. If you are caught in a lie refuse to respond to the accusation and make the same lie over, again and again. Did you chop down the cherry tree? Hell no.
10. Might makes right. Issues such as equal rights, equal opportunity, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion are secondary.

Enough, my friends. I promise to get back to blogging about bicycling through America and Canada in my next blog. I just have to tell you about the nastiest dog in America. —Curt