Mark Hewitt's Blog

I pack my stuff in the cool early morning, make my emotional goodbyes with the members of the Camp of Doom, grab a piece of scrap cardboard and walk out to the exit road. A neighbouring camp kindly add my one bag of rubbish to their truck (the Doomers are overloaded already) and I find my stripped-down pack surprisingly (relatively) light and comfortable.

I crouch in the dust by the side of the road as a slow stream of cars and trailers roll past me, and make my sign ("RENO. Need Blackjack and hookers.") It's only fifteen minutes before a big old RV rolls to a stop and Dr Bill offers to take me on to Reno.

Dr Bill is around forty and balding, but with the body of a weightlifter. He's been here teaching the Continuous Female Orgasm (through manual stimulation), which has been one of the most popular workshops here - he had to add an extra class because he turned away as many people as he let in. He's a sweet, philosophical guy with whom I share a lot of beliefs, and we have a great conversation as we roll out to the road. We have a great combination of conditions - getting away early, the early exodus which cleared out a lot of the city on Saturday and Sunday and clear weather this morning.

The traffic is moving steadily and we reach the fork onto the main road within an hour or so, a dramatic contrast to last year when Deidre and I spent six hours at a near-standstill in a dust storm. At the corner by the "Welcome to Black Rock City" sign we pick up two girls who are also hitching - Claudia is in her forties, blonde, thin and muscular, and builds the window displays for Macy's in San Francisco - I've been sitting in Union Square looking at her designs for ten months now. Bonny is younger, red haired and freckled and has an air of quiet calm about her.

We drive and converse, munching on Dr Bill's huge residual supply of food from the RV's fridge, stop only briefly in Empire for cigarettes (Claudia, Bonny and I all ran out a couple of days ago and we sit round a picnic table by the road puffing ecstatically) and make Reno by early afternoon.

I check back into the Sundance Motel, my post-Burn residence from last year. It's pretty grungy (it's gone downhill in the last year) but relatively cheap, and right now all I need is a bed, a shower and laundry facilities. My clothes are in the machine in half an hour and I'm making orgasmic noises in a hot shower with enough pressure to bruise the top of my head, watching layers of grey dust wash out of my skin and swirl away down the drain. My gear is strewn all over the room, everything a uniform shade of white-grey under its layer of dust.

In the evening I get a call on my cellphone. "Mr Hewitt?" "Yes." "We believe you may have smuggled a large amount of playa dust into Reno. There is a substantial portion of the Black Rock Desert missing at this time, and we believe you may be responsible". It's Mel from the Camp of Doom. Her and Randy have just arrived from the desert themselves, checked into a hotel and they've just finished their own ecstatic first-shower experience.

We meet up outside Fitzgerald's leprechaun-covered faux-Irish casino monstrosity, and I give Mel and Randy a quick tour of the interesting spots on Virginia Street, Reno's main drag. We hit a bunch of different bars carrying on a constant stream of stories and reminiscences, get Awful Awful burgers at the Gold Nugget diner ("They're Awful big...and Awful good!") and end up at Rum Bullions in the Silver Legacy, an "Island bar" under a huge replica silver mine and a giant sky-dome which is painted and lit to suggest twilight twenty-four hours a day. We drink rum cocktails (and share one flaming concoction out of a mildly hideous porcelain volcano), and stagger off to our respective rooms promising to never lose touch.

Labels: Black Rock Desert, burning man, exodus