All white on the Western front

Feb. 8, 008
Black Rockalypse

Strange to be out here in winter. The moisture in the air when it snows makes the Black Rock Desert region seem even more like the edge of the Earth than it does when the Nevada summer is cooking us.

The sky’s always above legal limits of blueness on clear days, but when it’s overcast in winter, a white fog covers the tops of the Calico Mountains like a plain, flimsy petticoat. Drifts of snow sidewind along the playa like corkscrewy ghosts, dancing in the ever-blowing breeze (or gale-force wind, depending). Up above, surrounded by silvery-opaque, even-keel cloud-cover, the sun peeks through a gauze wedding veil, shining down dimly like an opal. It’s a desert whiteout of a different sort … more angelic and/or more foreboding than a dust storm, depending on the observer’s mood. And way butt-ass cold.

playa in winter. archival photos by Bacon and/or Ice

Strange to be in winter at all. As a GRIT (girl raised in the south) I’ve never hung out in temperatures below 30, really. A couple freak snowstorms in my Tennessee childhood and that’s it. I’m certainly not built for cold weather, and neither are many of us out here, but I’ll avoid complaining about it because I’ve already figured out from listening to others that that’s boring.

Since the boys installed three new wood-burning stoves in the Black Rock Saloon, thinner-blooded individuals like myself have abandoned our trailers for the most part and taken to sleeping on the floor, evacuation-center-style, all together and cutched up with our dogs. Hey, they’re heat sources too.

Art Row, on the Ranch

Another first: I find myself wishing I owned all white clothes, so I could blend into the ground and sky, which at times possesses no visible horizon, only white white white. Everything is dark against the vista. Helicopters and Humvees and B-52s look so much more ominous. Especially when they’re barrelling down straight for us and then — poof — they disappear in the Not-Dome and the snow swirls in mini-tornados on the trajectories the vehicles follow in the other dimension. (Snow devils?)

Strange to see this many people out here in winter, too — the civilians outside the Not-Dome lining the 447 highway. Just for us, and for their own curiosity, not seeing us but knowing we’re there. Not seeing anything much besides the white … but watching for us, staying vigilant on our behalf, and recording it all.

where’s the end?