Fairfax Journey

energy basics

Geek Comments Off

Jan 092025

Even though I’ve studied energy work for eight years, I realize I haven’t written much about what I’ve been learning, and how it’s changed my life. In 2016 I quit my career as a software architect, and now lead a very different existence. So let’s talk about human energy fields, and some “basics” that enable energy work. If you want to learn about universal and human energy fields, I recommend starting with Hands of Light, by Barbara Brennan.

First, understand two things:

Energy follows Attention. Wherever you place your attention or thoughts or will-power or intentions, energy will move.

Our personal space is sovereign to us. One of the gifts of incarnating into a human body is that our human energy field, our auric space, is ours to manage however we wish. Generally, this extends a few feet in all directions from our body, although some systems map a much larger field.

I will also add that I believe in reincarnation, and my personal belief system is buddhist. Some of that training will undoubtably seep into how I share this!

When I studied with my first energy class teacher, Lynda Caesara, she taught a five-step process for clearing and orienting our system and preparing ourselves for energy work, or indeed preparing ourselves for anything. Lynda has no web presence, however she did a podcast in 2023 and an online class on Basics that I strongly recommend if you want to learn more. This Basics process is rumored to come from the Rosicrucians, and is taught at the Berkeley Psychic Institute and perhaps other places. I’m sharing it with you now, with deep gratitude to Lynda and her teaching. (Feel free to contact me if you want to study with her; there is a two-year wait list to get into her classes which start every September).

The Basics

Ground

Grounding is connecting our personal energy system to something larger than ourselves, giving ourselves a stabilizing feeling. Usually, we ground to the earth however we can also ground to water, air, or large objects. I’ve found ground in the nighttime sky, for example.

Grounding energetically happens through the body. Thought and intention are necessary, but ultimately it is your “light body” or energy system that grounds. Deep grounding comes in as an embodied “felt sense” or feeling. So dropping into your body is helpful before grounding.

I use visualization to ground to the earth. Our minds can help us connect to feeling. First notice your spine, with large vertebra near the bottom. Follow it down to feel your pelvis, then down to your leg bones in the center of your legs, and feet bones. Follow your spine up to ribs, clavicle, shoulder and arm and hand bones, then up through your neck to your skull. Your body rests on this framework of bones, made of earth materials, in resonance with the earth. Allow yourself to feel that.

Then notice the planet we are on, the faintly-curving horizon falling away in all directions, immense, giving a felt sense of the size of the earth, the weight of soil and rocks giving a feeling of density. Allow the felt sense of earth and ground come in through your feet and your butt, remembering your body is made of the same elements as the earth, and let the resonance between your body and the planet bring in the feeling of grounded connection.

Me/Not Me

Once grounded, the second step is sorting out what is yours and not yours in our personal energy system. Use your name as a mantra to call in all the bits of our energy that are elsewhere, and push anything out of our field that is not yours. You can release energetic (fiber) attachments from others, for example, or other people’s projections, expectations, and attachments to you.

This practice can be challenging, as it’s sometimes difficult to sort out what is and what is not ours. Family expectations, behaviors from the patterns that we run, habits we developed from childhood — these all take time and vulnerability to identify. Chant your name a few times, and see how the sounds resonates with the felt sense of you. Focus on your felt sense of yourself, and allow that which is not you to fall away, absorbed into the ground to be composted and converted into life energy for earth.

Edge

Now, notice and strengthen your auric boundary, an arm’s length away from your body in all directions, above and below and behind you too. This is your sovereign space. You strengthen it by noticing it and placing attention upon it.

Feel free to color and decorate your personal bubble so it truly feels like you. I personally like mid-century modern furniture, and spacecraft sensor and control panels 🙂

Core

The center of your body’s energy system is a column that runs in front of your spine, from your perineum to the top of your head. We call this the “core”. There are seven chakras or energy centers distributed along this column. (There are additional chakras above and below your body and in your joints, but we’re not going to focus on them, to keep things simple.)

Your core is essentially your energetic identity, containing seven kinds of intelligence and awareness. Some people have a naturally strong core, which helps them to have a strong sense of themself and what they are feeling at all times. Others have a core that is more ephemeral, or perhaps “wobbly”, allowing their sense of themself to collapse under stress. Some of us naturally orient towards other people’s feelings and experience, and in turn have a less strong sense of our own.

Like all things, attention brings energy and strengthens our core. It has a felt sense, and we have a felt sense of ourselves emanating from it. Our core is where we ground to the earth, and connect to whatever feels spiritual or divine, including our essence. We are the meeting place of grounding from below and divine from above, in our core. At the center of the chakra system, behind our breastbone, is our heart chakra, where we find compassion and love for ourself and others. So breathe into your core, allow yourself to feel your full range of identity and awareness and capacity, your body’s “gut sense” of the world around you, and your heart awareness as well as your mind.

Chakras

The final step is to balance our chakras, which can be energetically strong or weak, overdeveloped or underutilized, and/or extend in front of or behind our body. One by one, scan and breathe into your seven chakras, feeling the special awareness and capacity and unique felt sense and intelligence that each provides. Start with the root chakra, and proceed upward through all seven to reach the crown.

Seven Chakra Poster Chart © chakraplaza.com - serenaking.com — *(source: ChakraPlaza on Etsy, click to purchase)*

In addition to these descriptions, I feel that the first chakra represents our identity, the second is a source of power and vitality, and the third is the seat of willpower. Our heart chakra is the seat of compassion, our fifth chakra is the center of communication and hearing and music, and our sixth is the place of vision and imagination. Breathe several times into each chakra to feel and clarify what it does, noticing overactivity or under activity. Again, our attention moves the energy.

Here is a short guided Basics meditation I recorded for a friend.

You have now completed the five steps to being in your Basics. It can take just a couple of minutes, and with practice can come in almost instantaneously. Practicing daily will help stabilize your system, expand your awareness through your heart and body, and help you notice some of your energetic habits. For example, you may find you leave your body frequently, or feel others’ experience more easily than your own, or use your willpower to do everything. I’ll post another article soon about patterns 🙂

wildlife

Geek Comments Off

Nov 262024

One of the aspects of my home is location…on what is called the “wild land/urban interface”, or WUI. The western side of Fairfax is surrounded by open space, as the town is at the head of the Ross Valley, surrounded by hills on three sides. This means I get to co-exist with a lot of critters.

Most are delightful, like this fox who explored my deck this morning. A gray fox, Urocyon cinereoargenteus, known for its ability to climb trees. I’ve seen fox a handful of times up on the hill behind my house, but never this close.

What I mostly see are coyote and deer, with the occasional bobcat, raccoon or rabbit. There is a pack of coyote in the area, and I’ve heard them howling at night less than a hundred yards from the house. Sometimes I don’t hear them for months. Other times it’s a nightly serenade.

I’ve written about an annual spring parade of turkeys. And also about cougar in the hills. I’m sure the cougar, bobcats and coyote keep the turkey population under control.

And then there is the rattlesnake population. This 30″ northern pacific rattlesnake has been hanging around my house for years, probably in the drain system (which is a blessing, as it ensures the wood rat population is under control). The second one is smaller, perhaps 20″. I’ve seen both of them this year, crossing the street to hang out in the creek bed, entertaining/terrifying passing cyclists and dog walkers. They may also tuck themselves into the large rocks in the front yard landscaping, I’ve spotted them there too. I’ve considered posting a “rattlesnake crossing” sign.

Wood rats are a problem, as the creek bed is their ideal environment. In 2022, we found two the size of small cats had built a nest in a corner of a garage, churning out little rats that became a nuisance. A live trap solved that problem, as I was able to catch them on subsequent days and release them several miles away near San Geronimo creek, over the hills to the west. Strangely, there was a story a few weeks later from someone in Woodacre reporting that two huge rats had taken up residence in their garage. Coincidence? In any case, that solved the rat problem for a while.

Then I found our pet rattlesnake in the corner of the same garage digesting a big meal last summer. And we found and cleaned out another rat nest with dead offspring, yuck. Shooing the snake out of the garage, I installed a better sweep on the bottom of the garage door, and we seem to have eliminated the wildlife in the house. At least for now.

Every June, the Ross Valley school district imports a herd of goats to clear excess vegetation for fire safety. Not exactly wildlife, but a very entertaining presence for three weeks. Not only does this become a huge petting zoo attraction, but the two dogs that accompany the herds make their presence known all night. Of course the goats attract coyotes, so June is a particularly musical month, sometimes annoyingly so.

(I appreciate the fire suppression! One of the risks of being in the WUI is that a wildfire in west Marin could get blown over the ridges into Fairfax, and we are on the front lines of fire defense. In 2022, the fire department did amazing work up behind my house to eliminate down wood, and we all weed-whack our properties every summer to reduce the hazard.)

The most visible and frequent wild neighbors are the crows and redtail hawks and turkey vultures. Fairfax has a murder of about 60 crows (yes, that’s what a bunch of crows are called) that daily visit the trees and field across the street. Plus I can see a turkey vulture or two cruising somewhere in the valley most of the time, if I look.

Two redtails moved in last winter, building a nest in a big oak above my house. Two months later, there was a third young redtail learning to fly and catch rats in the creek bed. I actually saw it stoop and nail a rat one morning. I wish I had pictures, but they are hard to photograph without a telephoto lens. I will say that I appreciate them most of all as neighbors, even though they announce their presence with authority every morning just before sunrise. They keep an eye on things in a magical way.

Time to publish this, as the crows have arrived.

good-bye, schwartzchild

Reflection 1 Response »

Nov 092023

We first met in early December 2004. He and his brother were 2-month-old kittens at the Marin Humane Society. I was separated from my first wife, living alone in a 2-bedroom house in Terra Linda and trying to make it feel like home. Nancy Jones was moving in with me, and we spontaneously visited the humane society and took matching black kittens with us. Being the nerd that I am, I named them Edwin P. Hubble and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, two famous astronomers. As an aside, Chandrasekhar was famous for theoretical physics work with black holes, and another famous astronomer named Schwartzchild computed the event horizon radius for black holes. So Jen and I have ironically nicknamed him “Schwartzchild” in honor of his solid black presence 🙂

Hubble and Chandra quickly endeared themselves, destroying Christmas ornaments, climbing the Christmas tree, curtains, screen doors… They were companions through divorce, creation of new relationship, remarriage, buying land and building a house. We moved to Novato, then San Rafael while the house was under construction, then moved here in 2008. In 2011, we lost Chandra to kidney disease, my mother’s 14-year-old German Shepherd to cancer, and then Nancy to leukemia complications. When all the dust settled, my household went from five down to just the two of us.

My house has always had Hubble in it. Hubble was in the space as Jen and I created our relationship, and when she moved in with me seven years ago. His quirky presence and siamese-like voice have been in my life through so much change and evolution that I hardly remember who I was before he moved in.

Two years ago, he was losing weight and drinking a ton of water. Our vet confirmed my fears, he had some kind of abdominal cancer, and only 15% of his kidney function. So we shifted his diet a bit, and started giving him a dropper of CBD each day. It worked so well that he became a stoner cat, plaintively meowing for the CBD and licking it straight from the dropper. He’s gradually wanted more and more of it, so the daily ritual became every four hours, then three, and finally two. We went from cat-strength to dog-strength, until he was finally consuming about 25mg of CBD a day. His weight stabilized, and our miracle cure seemed to keep him happy and comfortable, even though he became less steady on his feet, and began looking rather gaunt. I knew I was going to need to put him to sleep sooner or later, and I asked him to let us know when he was ready to go. And I told him every day that I loved him.

Alas, his failing health became more evident a couple of months ago, and I could feel the end coming soon. This photo was taken by a friend in early September. This is a cat in pain.

It all became clear Saturday night, when he started throwing up and yowling at 2am. More CBD helped, he settled down for a couple of hours, and it all happened again at 4:30. I contacted my vet on Sunday via email, and we confirmed a time for her to come on Monday. Sunday night was a repeat of Saturday, and there was no doubt in our minds that it was time to let him go.

The end was lovely and gentle, as Dr. Rose gave him progressive medication, I held him in my lap, and Jen bore witness.

Now I am getting used to life without him. It’s strange, and strangely quiet. His spirit visits on occasion; I awoke Tuesday morning feeling him sprawled on top of me, purring away. When Jen is gone, and I’m alone in the house, it feels quite different. We all miss him, not only Jen and I, but the house and the land as well. One of the longest relationships of my life is coming to an end.

the end of the leopard lounge

Burning Man, Travel 1 Response »

Sep 092023

This is kind of a eulogy.

One of my favorite parts of Burning Man has always been a little camp-within-our-camp, created by a manic bunch of guys from southern California. VW Bus Camp doesn’t have much shared infrastructure, but many of us will get early-access permits just so we can help build the Leopard Lounge. This has been going on for about ten years.

So, this trailer shows up on Saturday before the event opens, and in about four hours, a dozen volunteers carpet a big chunk of playa, put up a dozen pop-up shade structures, pound rebar into the ground and strap it all down. Then rolls of bamboo partitions are zip-tied to make walls, plastic palm trees are rolled out, the bar is assembled, lounge chairs and couches spread out, and sound equipment set up. The result is a fabulous pop-up place with live music, tequila shots, foot rubs and rooms for massage and energy work. We all donate tequila, foot massages, bartending, and musical skills to make it happen.

Here is a little snippet from 2019, a chill afternoon on a hot dusty day. Eric drives the live music, usually from keyboards, while Bingo and Sean tend bar and a bunch of folks are getting foot care.

Click to watch the show, and please forgive my crappy video skills!

This year was special, as we had some fabulous musicians drop in on Friday. A fellow from Ecuador named Louder picked up the guitar, and a classical pianist named Pink Tea started singing and playing keyboards and drums. One of our camp mates sang, drummed, and pulled out his box of harmonicas. Another added scatty backup vocals. The place was in full swing when the rain started, and the show ripped on into the evening as the playa got muddy and folks sheltered in place. The guitar had to stop around 6pm when the ground got so wet that players were getting shocked.

Here are links to movies I shot. It was one of my best afternoons ever on the playa. (Right-click to download).

Louder on guitar, Pink Tea on drums behind Eric

Alas, an era of our camp is ending, as Eric decided that this was the last appearance of the Leopard Lounge. Perhaps it was the double rainbow that appeared at sunset, I heard Eric say that there was one the first year that they brought the Lounge to the playa. Perhaps it was the reality of dealing with so much mud. Regardless, as the lounge was disassembled the next day, the crew gave away carpets and fake plants. Bamboo partitions were torn apart, and soon hundreds of people in our part of Black Rock City were making their way through muddy streets with bamboo walking sticks. We’re starting to talk about what we might do next year, perhaps creating a bar.

So, I’ll miss you Leopard Lounge, and the magic you made. Eric, Art, Mike, Mark, Solo and the others, thank you for bringing this to our camp for so many years. Bingo, Sean, Tater, Sherrie, Dave, Martyna, Busboy Bob, Donna Lee, Dawn & Teco, Shannon, JC and everyone else who helped make this happen…I so appreciate how you all showed up.

I’m really gonna miss the lounge.

ttitd vi

Burning Man, Geek, Travel 1 Response »

Sep 072023

Welcome home.

That’s what the greeters say when you finally get to the gate, and it feels true. For the sixth time, I was back to That Thing In The Desert. Again our trusty Westy, Mojave, has carried us without problems from home to Lassen (where we store our Burning Man gear), and then across the Nevada desert on dirt highways to arrive early on Friday. Jen came along for the first time since 2018, her seventh burn, and we cheerfully and easily set up our camp, complete with so much aluminet that someone referred to our camp as “The Tiara”. We were tucked in right at 4 & E, across the street from the Alternate Energy Zone tower. Here we are the first night, celebrating with vino.

Arriving early let us enjoy a quiet Black Rock City, even as traffic picked up on Saturday, with camp construction noises all around. The Leopard Lounge showed up midday, nearly everyone pitched in for set up, and was rolling with live music and tequila by evening. Our camp filled over the next two days, as dozens of VW buses came in. A core group brought shade structure pieces, and assembled Rosie’s Retreat, a large common space where we had events all week And we had a somewhat international crew this year, with a neighbors from Poland, Oz, Sierra Leon, and a couple from Beijing. (Zhen generously shared some of his photos with me, which are mixed in below).

Clearly, Jen is having a good time, and so am I! The activities at Rosie’s Retreat include some great presentations on olive oil and wine, Bus Camp history, plant enthogenics, Mother’s High Tea, and the annual tie-dye event, which was very well attended.

And then of course, there is the artwork on the playa, my favorite part.

Babel, a large installation slated for burning on Friday

This was my second year as a Ranger, and I ended up doing four shifts. The high point was helping two folks in the Ranger Sanctuary (a protected quiet place) re-locate to new camps. And helping a nearby camp handle a medical emergency when someone got very dehydrated.

Of course, everything changed on Friday afternoon, as rain started to fall and the playa mud got too deep for walking. The Leopard Lounge had an exceptional afternoon with a variety of guest performers, until the damp made it impossible to play. We sacked out early, and awoke Saturday to a muddy wonderland. Our plans for a Saturday departure were trashed, the gates were closed and it was impossible to move except by walking barefoot, or with plastic bags or socks on your feet. Anything else accumulated so much mud (boots, bikes, etc.) that you became stuck in place.

Early Saturday morning, a sea of mud outside our camp. The tarp on the ground and shade structure kept our camp cozy and dry.

Life in Bus Camp continued in a pretty normal way through the muddy weekend, with two exceptions. First, we ran out of tequila (although someone came by and gifted us a bottle on Monday 🙂 The second was more serious — the mud made it impossible to service the porta potties, and we all had to adapt. Fortunately, someone in the neighborhood put signs on the porta potties telling people to pee in bottles, so the porta potties wouldn’t get filled up…and that worked perfectly. Our part of the city never had a problem. And we had ample empty water bottles (and a 5-gallon bucket for emergencies, which we never needed).

One of the other Rangers in camp had a radio, so I called in and went on duty. The AEZ tower next door became an info hub, as they had free wifi, so I hung out around there. Dozens of folks came by asking about the weather, exodus, the Man burn, and I shared what I knew from other Rangers.

As the mud started to dry, walking became easier. Sunday morning we got out to see more artwork, and and found some of it was already being disassembled. But the skies were spectacular.

Then of course it rained again, but lightly. We could see how quickly everything was drying out, and Monday afternoon we packed up our camp in preparation for departure. The exodus was in full swing, we saw plenty of folks leaving. At about 12:40, planes started landing at the airport, so clearly the runway had become usable again. And there was a steady flow of aircraft all afternoon as some of the wealthier attendees got out of dodge.

We stayed for the Man burn Monday night. Rather than join the madness, we found a nice spot on the playa a half-mile away, next to a parked vehicle. We hung out for an hour, watching the fireworks and activities until finally the Man became a huge fireball. Spectacular, as always.

We arose Tuesday at 5am to load up the van, and headed out at sunrise. Our exodus was easy, as it took 2 hours to reach the gate. The drive back to Lassen was uneventful. Even cleanup was relatively easy, as we had far less dust than other years. We did have a very muddy carpet, and won’t be bringing that to the playa again. And our new shade canopy was a resounding success, making set up and tear down a lot easier.

So, it was the wettest year ever. I feel happy I got to participate. It was the last year of the Leopard Lounge, and our camp will feel different next year without it. As always, I wonder what I missed — there is too much going on to catch more than a tiny fraction. But I loved the art work, being a Ranger, and making our camp delightful regardless of the weather. Every time we come here we get better at it.

Next time, we’ll bring extra tequila!

fire break

Landscaping Comments Off

Nov 222022

In August, we got a rather unexpected notice from the Ross Valley Fire Department. They were coming to do fire mitigation up the hill behind our house. As it turns out, we are right on the town boundary with open space all around us, and the fire department got funding to reduce burnable material in the forests around the edge of Fairfax. This will make it easier to protect the town if a wildfire comes sweeping through our area. We were, of course, delighted — I’ve been pulling scotch broom up that hill ever since we finished the house in 2008, and it’s been a tough battle. Any help is appreciated!

Sure enough, tree crews and laborers showed up in September, and worked for a week to pull broom, limb trees, and make piles of burnable branches. They hauled truckload after truckload of material down the hill.

Piles of branches and scotch broom across the street, ready for the chipper

Yesterday was burn day, and several dozen firefighters arrived bright and early. They ran a 2-inch fire hose at the end of the street, extending about a quarter mile behind all our houses past about thirty burn piles. Near each pile, a T-connection added a smaller hose for controlling the burn.

And then it was time to light everything.

About ten piles burning behind the houses to the north of us

…and a few more behind our neighbor to the south.

An hour later it’s all over, the piles are done smoldering and hoses are getting rolled up. The results are impressive. All this work pushed the edge of the big scotch broom plants further up the hill, making more of the forest visible. Tons of downed wood are gone, branches have been thinned out, and my fire suppression job each summer just got much easier. We’ve got some big charred spots on the hillside, which will go away over time. And the field across the street has pile after pile of chipped material, which is gradually getting spread all around the field. My hat is off to our fire department!

ttitd v

Burning Man, Geek, Reflection, Travel Comments Off

Sep 252022

First view of Black Rock City this year. Foreshadowing…

After a three-year hiatus, Burning Man happened again this year. I eagerly prepared early, not knowing if I would get a ticket, or what I would experience. I have learned that clear resolve and intention makes things happen, so I’ve been acting for months on the assumption I would get there. To be sure, I did. I had 12 days on the playa, experienced joy and exhaustion, clarity, inebriation, dawn, heat, dust, learning and teaching, responsibility, delight, connection, isolation. It was all things hoped for, and many that could not be anticipated.

Most of all, ‘That Thing In The Desert’ is not a destination, but a journey. I had the intention to become a Black Rock Ranger this time, and one of my friends needed a hexayurt delivered to our camp before the event formally started. A month ago, a sage friends shared that one of my guides was telling me to “look upon this journey as a “vision quest”, and to make sure that “my masculine and feminine were in balance”. And so the journey took form.

Ranger HQ, 6:15 & Esplanade, looking out on the inner playa on Sunday morning. Lots of kilts. Rangers are easy to recognize by their hats, and the pervasive use of khaki, which is the color of the dust. And they carry radios.

If you haven’t been to Black Rock City, then it’s hard to understand what Rangers are: experienced, compassionate and trained burners with radios and access to resources. They are first responders to everything: pointing out the nearest porta-potties, calling medical aid, dealing with consent violations, drug ODs, whatever. In a sense, the journey began here, because in the spring I attended online and in-person classes.

I also got the idea to bring cloth patches to my friends in VW Bus Camp this year, and worked on the design early this summer. From a past camp project, a motto came into being, “There is great pleasure camping with tequila”. I did the drawing, and my partner Jen did the color scheme and contributed the agave plant.

I ended up getting 200 of them made, in two sizes, and handed them out everywhere. They were popular, and I still have some left, so please let me know if you want one!

The third prelude was the VW Hexayurt adventure. One of our camp members needed a place to stay, and one of our other members had a hexayurt shaped like a VW bus, build some years ago. I volunteered to transport it from Nevada City, CA to our camp. About 15 pieces of foam insulation, cut to fit together with tape, plus a home-made swamp cooler in a Rubbermaid container. It made a neat 100-lb stack on the roof rack, including a piece of plywood and some lumber to protect the panels. This will be the shelter for our campmate Heather Winfrey and her husband Jerald, who are traveling without bus this year. Heather has been dealing with a very serious cancer for the last few months, and they need every luxury we can afford them.

The hexayurt formed a neat stack on the roof rack

All packed with the yurt and all my gear in Lassen, ready to head for the playa

I set off from home on Tuesday, August 23rd, with a stop at an Oak Dance fire ritual with friends in the east bay. Though I wasn’t expecting it, the ritual reoriented me, I knew I was on a vision quest. From the moment I left the fire, my trip took on a curious, spacious, serendipitous feel, a quiet and deep heart space, and I realized how much I needed a solitary journey. After spending the night at a friend’s place in Sacramento, I stopped in Nevada City to load up the hexayurt, as you see in the photos. That night I was up at the cabin in Lassen, pulling out all the paraphernalia that would make camp comfortable on the playa…shade pop-up, solar lights, 7-gallon jugs of water, tarps, window insulation, bicycles, c/hairs, rebar anchors, ratchet straps. It’s now a pretty tidy and organized pile, with the tarps, shade net, anchors and hammer in a big duffle bag on the roof (so I can get them on arrival) and other gear in two big bins. I take a leisurely full day to pack, then head east through Susanville and across the desert early Friday.

It’s four hours from my cabin to BRC. The gate takes a couple of hours, and then I’m in!

Nevada has highway signs on their dirt roads

Heading north past another dry lake southwest of Gerlach

Arriving midday on Friday, it’s not very crowded. I screw a big tarp down to the playa, park the van on one half, erect and strap down the pop-up, insulate the windows, and throw netting over the whole thing to add shade. Add bamboo mats, a carpet, table and chairs, and it’s feeling like home. By evening, it’s margarita time.

…so my place is expanded with tents, bikes and parked cars

Setup complete. This year, I have guests camping with me…

The hexayurt got unloaded first, of course. On Saturday, a group of us got together to assemble it, complete with a battery-operated swamp cooler. It was all ready to go by the time that Heather and Jerald arrived.

This turned out to be a very dusty year, and we have lots of wind and limited visibility nearly every afternoon, sometimes at night too. Cleaning is a major daily chore.

More than anything, I’m here for the art. The playa always offers a rich display of creativity.

The fourth theme for this burn was Rangering. I joined the Black Rock Rangers this year, going through online and in-person training earlier in the year. My second day on the playa, I did a ten-hour shift to complete training. Rangers are basically just burners with radios and extra awareness. It’s a little like being an off-duty cop, EMT and therapist all in one.

May be an image of one or more people, people standing and outdoors — A bunch of Rangers going on duty. Photo by Stephanie Gale

Going on shift, complete with radio. Still haven’t figured out where to hang this thing.

My Ranger shift buddy, engaging with the artwork. We always travel in pairs.

I really enjoyed Rangering. The alpha training shift was very tiring, and the real scenarios we used for practice were intense, some of them very scary. My regular six-hour shift was moderately busy, we had to deal with a couple of folks in melt-down situations, but mostly we were just answering questions and being helpful. The Rangers I met are good people, exceptionally capable, humorous and dedicated. The stuff that happens at Burning Man is like any city of 80,000 people…raised by an order of magnitude. For example, there is an 80-bed hospital, and at one point all the beds were full. This year we saw a LOT of e-bikes and motorized scooters, some traveling at 30 mph (totally illegal, all vehicles are limited to 5 mph). Of course there were collisions and broken bones, though I did not hear of anyone dying in a traffic accident.

After 11 full days, it’s time to go. Cleaning and packing takes a while, my guests were gone before the Man burned Saturday night, which was smart thinking on their part. Departure from the event is tricky, as there are huge bursts of traffic throughout Labor Day weekend. I left on Monday afternoon, which was a huge mistake. It took ten hours for me to get to the highway, a bit after midnight. I should have spent the night, hung out with the few folks still in camp, and left in the morning. I would have gotten home just as fast.

Annie (a camp mate) cleaning the dust off her VW before an early departure. Electric leaf blower, what a great idea!

Tuesday sunrise, after sleeping a few hours on all the stuff inside the Westy

Dust devil, as people leave and open space reappears

Driving back to California on 120 miles of dirt roads, with a stop on the Nobles Emigrant trail to check out a cave

This was such a solitary trip, even with all my cheerful and engaging camp mates. It is oddly humbling to feel so completely at home in such an extreme place. I had a lot of good, thoughtful solo time. I met people, coached and massaged people, served tequila, smoked and drank, talked about VW’s and life endlessly, and wish I’d explored more. I perhaps saw half the artwork, watched the burns from a distance, did not go out into the psychedelic colorful craziness of the middle of the night, did not go to any of the dance camps, fall in love, or get seriously drunk. Something deep has been moving inside me this year, and my time in the desert feels rich in only the way deep stillness brings. Wendell Barry wrote:

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

defecting from bimmer world

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Jul 052022

Does Honda take design cues from nature?

I’ve been an unabashed fan of BMWs for more than 40 years, however the last two years of owning an E70 X5 have cured me of much enthusiasm. While the black SUV has been supremely comfortable, it has proven to be an expensive investment for every day driving. In 20,000 miles of ownership, I’ve replaced the tailgate latch ($1500), front axle half-shaft ($1500), rear brakes ($1000), battery ($440), emergency brake switch, outside air temperature sensor…some of this is normal maintenance for sure, but the cost of standard items like brakes and battery is really painful. Things are failing that should never be a problem in the first 60,000 miles of a vehicle’s life.

So I sold her to another enthusiast, and never intend to buy a BMW newer than about 2007 ever again. Jen’s 2007 328xi has been a trooper, quick, reliable and comfortable with more than 200K miles, and my 1997 528i has been the same. The older cars are fairly easy to work on, parts are not expensive, and most of all, they just work. Every time I was in my mechanic’s shop for X5 work, I heard another story about X5 issues as he talked to customers on the phone. Control module failures, astronomical costs for things wearing out or breaking early (Ignition coils at 70K miles, catalytic converter at 120K miles!?!) I got the message.

I need a pickup truck again, as I prepare for work on the cabin up near Lassen. My last truck (Roy, a dear 1994 Ford that always felt like a pile of parts heading in the same direction) has been gone for many years, and the state of the art has definitely moved forward. Having owned a 2001 Honda CRV once upon a time, I’m drawn to another Honda, and after a lot of research, I find a low-miles 2017 Ridgeline for sale in southern California.

This truck is a revelation. It has all the comfort and features of the X5, all-wheel drive with more cargo space and better mileage. It has plenty of power yet runs on regular gas, which will save me hundreds of dollars a year. It’s fully integrated with my iPhone. It’s a Honda, I expect superb reliability.

Now I’ve left the army of people driving black SUVs, and joined the endless ranks of white pickup truck owners. It’s a different kind of anonymity on the road. But I can throw a pile of firewood in the back without worrying about it, it’s easy to see why the USA is full of pickup trucks.

By the way, it’s time for our annual fire-safety land clearing in the neighborhood, and the goat herd is back, happily munching away at everything they can reach. The photo of the truck captures some of the charm of living in a temporary barnyard.

dixie fire dance

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Aug 202021

Fire crews and activity around Mill Creek a day and a half ago

The last two weeks have been rather nerve-wracking, as the enormous Dixie Fire has moved north and west towards my cabin in Mill Creek. When we got the evacuation warning, Jen and I headed up there, packed valuables and furniture, and brought it all home. This spurred a monumental burst of home and storage reorganization, but I digress…

X5, station wagon and trailer fully loaded

The fire grew relentlessly north towards Chester, twenty five miles east of us. Fire crews managed to protect the town, however the fire jumped Highway 36 and proceeded north into Lassen National Park, and west towards Highway 32. We watched as the burn expanded from 100,000 to 500,000 acres, generating pyro cumulus clouds big enough to cause lightening.

Dixie fire pyro cumulus clouds from Winters, CA, 150 miles away

A lightening storm struck Morgan summit about a week ago, less than four miles north of the cabin, and started a secondary fire that expanded toward the cabin.

Fire crews were able to hold fire lines at Highways 89 and 36, so the north flank never got less than two miles away, however winds out of the northeast pushed the main fire towards Mill Creek. Satellite maps show hot spots a quarter of a mile away from the cabins two days ago.

The video up above was recorded that night from Mill Creek. Fire crews from the San Jose Fire Department (and others) were in our community, while northeastern winds pushed the fire across the Mill Creek plateau, across the river and above us. The fire wrapped around the south side of the cabins, and we were burning on three sides. However, the crews up on the plateau have been able to keep the fire from entering the Mill Creek canyon, which is full of old growth timber and becomes inaccessible to the west of the community.

This morning, it appears that miracle has occurred — the wind is shifting around to the southwest, and pushing the fire back on itself. The activity and the heat have dropped dramatically, as shown in these four daily heat maps

August 17th, everything north of us is burning

August 18th, the fire is moving south towards us

August 19th, fire moves south and west on the plateau, just across the creek from the cabins

This morning, the wind shifts and the nearby fire is burning itself out

I think we’ve made it. I am endlessly grateful to the fire crews and all their hard work. And deeply grateful to all my friends and energy workers who have brought prayers, intentions and respectful relationship to all the elements in play here. The land, wind and fire spirits have blessed us, allowing our community to live on in this beautiful place, with our local forest of big trees, the creek and the fish, the deer and bear, squirrels and chipmunks, Stellar’s jays and crows.

Yet the fire burns on, and will take weeks (or months) to fully contain. As of today, it has grown to over 700,000 acres, destroyed 1225 structures, and is only 35% contained…after burning for 37 days. We aren’t even into the worst part of the fire season yet, rains are still two months away. The Lassen area is forever changed by it, at least, for my lifetime.

mojave returns

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Jul 082021

Rebuilt high-compression, 2-liter motor from South Africa

Our Westfalia engine replacement was completed on May 21st, so I flew down to southern Cal, got to Victorville, and drove Mojave home with her new heart. And therein lies a story of serendipity and further adventure.

To start with, I missed my flight to Ontario because of a gate change that got screwed up. They kindly rebooked me onto a flight to Palm Springs, a 2-hour drive from Victorville, sigh. Then a miracle occurred…the flight could not land in Palm Springs because of high winds, and after three attempts, headed over to in Ontario. Honestly pilot, it’s not my fault!

Looking for a Lyft to Victorville, I was expecting a long wait for the 45-minute trip out into the desert. To my surprise and delight, a driver showed up in 5 minutes. Just so happens, she lives out next to Victorville, and was delighted to get a paying fare on her way home for the day. So I arrived at the shop around 11am, not much later than I had hoped when I drove to the airport before sunrise.

Mojave (the new name for our Westy) was complete and ready to go, and after a post-mortem discussion of the dead engine, paying my bill, and collecting a large bin of extra parts, I grabbed a big lunch and hit the road mid-afternoon. There are a couple of issues that I didn’t have time to resolve: the exhaust on the replacement engine had a crack (making us sound like a large truck) and the exhaust manifold on the new engine was sticking down way too far, scraping on the ground if I go over a bump.

By early evening, I’m over Tehachapi pass, through Bakersfield, and gassed up in Shafter. After droning up I-5 and I-580, I am crossing the Richmond Bridge into San Rafael, almost home, when the engine starts misfiring. Shit! What could be wrong? Stumbling along, I make it off the bridge and pull onto the frontage road, where the engine dies. Then I notice the gas tank is empty. We used to get a reliable 320+ miles out of a full tank of gas, however blasting up I-5 at 80 mph with the new engine, we are bone dry after 284 miles. It’s a relief that nothing is broken 🙂 I’m only 9 miles from home, so I call and wake Jen, who cheerfully and kindly drives over with our spare gas container. I finally arrive home just before midnight, tired and happy.

Now it’s a few weeks later, and I’ve gotten the exhaust system fixed. Johnny Franklin Muffler in San Rafael is a solid business that’s been around since I was in high school. They cut off the part of the manifold that was sticking down, removed the rest of the system, and fabricated a free-flow system that makes her sound like a sports car. The deep, throaty exhaust is quite alien for a vehicle like a Vanagon, but Jen and I both enjoy her new character. Plus I swear there is more power!

Exhaust system with the cracked and protruding parts cut out

Skillful fabrication of the free-flow system

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