GARGOZO MANUSCRIPT

What began as a Fellini film on steroids suddenly became a Dino de Laurentiis disaster epic.  Michael and Maria brought Munson and me to Burning Man in 2008.  When the idea was first proposed, Munson and I had some concerns.  Neither of us like to be around strangers, let alone 50,000 of them.  Forty years earlier, we might have considered camping, but it sure as hell wouldn't have been on a dry lake bed in the middle of the Nevada desert.  Lastly, even though it was decades ago, I can still recall promising myself that I had seen the inside of my last port-a-potty.  Despite our misgivings, we agreed to go.  Michael knew us both very well and his pitch was simply, "Trust me, of all the people on this planet, the 2 of you do not want to go to your graves without seeing this".  Michael turned out to be right.  Maybe I've seen less in my lifetime than others have; but for me, Burning Man was easily the most incredible man-...

Once we had thrown everything into the back of the rented SUV, we drove at well under the 5 mile-an-hour speed limit to the outer edge of the campsite area.  The wind found another gear and visibility was soon reduced to a few feet beyond the hood of the car.  We were sitting in the front seat looking through the windshield at a total whiteout. We could no longer see the campsites but they had been there a minute ago so Munson simply aimed the car in the opposite direction.  In so doing, we figured we would minimize the chances of running over people and eventually come up against the perimeter fence.  We were moving slower than if we had been walking and after a long while, the bright orange perimeter fence finally appeared in front of us.  We couldn't see it until we were only a few feet from it with barely enough space for Munson to stop without plowing in to it.  After reaching the fence, we turned left and drove along side it at...

Never mind that the Leakey family found fossil evidence of Homo erectus dating back a mere few million years; the creature that Gerben threw down the hillside was possibly the 3.9 billion year-old original ancestor of all living organisms on Earth. The creature had miraculously formed and come to life in an abandoned pond on Mount Washington.  The pond sat on the property where Gerben and I were house sitting in the late 1960s.  In addition to looking after the place we had agreed to clean out the small pond which had been ignored for many years. It was a small 2 bedroom and 1 bath, 888 square foot, wood-frame house on a huge 8,500 square foot lot at 3231 Future Street, 90065.  The house is still there but if you use Google Earth you can't see it as the property is completely blanketed by a canopy of tree tops.  The house sits on the very back of the lot, 175 feet from the street.  The house can't be seen from the street partly because o...