A Thousand Words

They say a picture is worth a thousand words

Embed one in another

And the words surely multiply

Friends join me in the Black Rock Desert

A place of bleak, inhospitable sand and rock

Blazing summer heat or numbing winter cold

Air so clear, the horizon clips off thunderheads 100 miles distant

Two miles of lake-settled silt beneath us

Earth’s fire burps up superheated water at its edges

The flat ground disorients

Only parallel grooves keep us focused

We find the shore and stop

Engines off, we step into stillness so profound

An exhaled breath is a violation

Yet, 80,000 people found unbridled revelry here a few weeks back

With Brigadoon regularity, a pop-up city that came and went

Leaving only earth and quiet behind

A quarter century before, we were a different group

By circumstance, I had a key and opened the gate

Beers in hand, anxious to soak in the warm water

And watch the dance of waters at the famous geyser

Marvel at the rainbow of heat-loving algae on its flanks

Andy took a photo

We begged him to join us

One more, he said, then clicked another

One of those attempts adorns walls worldwide today

I brought a copy back to the desert

To deliver to a group of playa guardians

We pose for our own photo

With Andy’s photo

Rich, late afternoon light spills over the playa

Reds and yellows deepening on distant mountains

Click

Embed one photo in another

A thousand times a thousand words

We settle into our evening routine

Sky blue becomes indigo, then inky black

The first star, then others pepper the night sky

A dusky Milky Way wheels overhead smearing the cap of night to each horizon

On our backs

We watch eternity unfold