The post-Burning Man drive south through the Owens Valley.
The drive through the Owens Valley on the way home from Burning Man is consistently the highlight of the trip.
The Owens Valley is magnificent in a specific way: the Sierra Nevada on your left, the White Mountains on your right, the valley between them extraordinarily wide and flat and almost empty. Bishop is the only real town. The air is clear at altitude. After a week of alkaline dust and ten thousand people and the organized chaos of the playa, the valley’s quiet is very loud.
In 2022 I stopped at a cemetery in Bishop where some Powers family relatives are buried. I found a country meat store and bought bacon. I took pictures of clouds. I watched a pickup truck with a trailer jackknife in front of me and managed not to be involved in it.
All of this is ordinary travel. But ordinary travel in the Owens Valley, coming down from the elevation and the intensity of the burn, at the exact moment when you’ve closed one chapter and the next one hasn’t started yet — that’s the right time for the Owens Valley.
The drive south takes about six hours. I’m never in a hurry on that particular road.