As always, it seemed like such a great idea at the time. I mean, there we were, at the close of Burning Man 2005, with a pile of leftover propane canisters, some funny looking blimps of some other flammable gas, a crane with a winch, and a two ton iron safe. Could nature allow this little group of humans, with plenty of inflammable desert space in which to burn things, spend more than a few hours without combining this collection of objects so clearly given them with but a single purpose?

The idea was that we would create a circle of canisters, put a gallon milk jug filled with white gas in the center (after soaking everything around it) and then ignite it all with a flare from a safe distance. Safety being such a high priority, the crew wrapping chains around the safe took their time carefully wrapping and adjusting them so that it could be lifted securely and evenly.

We all stood a good distance away and made a circle around the point of impact. The gas was poured. The flare popped into a bright red spot of light and quickly carving a beautiful arc into the center of the pile. Flames bloomed like a flower greeting the sun and the crowd responded with cheers. Seconds later there was a rattle of chains and the safe plunged into the center, its impact a soul satisfying, ground shaking thud that send a whoop of flames out and up in all directions. Again we roared with pleasure and the gleeful cackling that only explosions can bring.

Most of the flames licked the edges of the safe and then slipped back beneath it, but there was one spot where a tiny light continued to flicker as a canister vented burning gas as rapidly as it could. I remember hearing a dull pop right before I was thrown to the ground, the left side of my face and eye thick with pain. Now it was my turn to vent shock, fear, and surprise in the form of shouting and cursing. Within seconds, I got through the screaming and went into the calm analysis and rescue mode that seems to kick in for me in the face of intense crisis and natural disaster. I sat up cross-legged and began to study my face slowly and carefully with my hands. I couldn’t see and my head was pounding, but the cut that crossed my eye didn’t seem to have penetrated it too deeply.

At this point, two first responders arrived and started running through a routine I’d learned myself as a Flipside Ranger and first aid student. I chuckled as they tried to calm me and assess the situation in much the same way I had learned, but was also appreciative that they were so fast and alert. A scarred metal Mad Max style art car, itself a flamethrower, hauled me over to the medic on call. He had been prepping since he heard the explosion. “Yep. Thought I might be seeing someone soon.”

The impact of the shrapnel had forced blood to pour in behind my cornea. While likely not too bad in the long run, he thought I should be checked out by a specialist. It was already about 3:00 AM but someone managed to find a tow truck driver who had come out from Reno. He had just discovered that the car he was supposed to tow had vanished. He agreed to drive me the two hours to a hospital as long as his boss didn’t find out.

My face was completely wrapped in bandages and my head felt large and dull. As we bounced along the Nevada back roads I lamented that I would never be able to see the driver, but for better or worse I was able to listen to his increasingly more intense cell phone calls. The first was to his boss who had sent him out on this harebrained mission in the first place. The truck was, apparently, running out of gas and there was nowhere to buy diesel that late at night in the middle of nowheresville Nevada. The arguments escalated to the point where his boss refused to meet him with fuel and told him “good luck, stop bothering me, I’m going to sleep.”

There was only one way that this conversation could end. It was interrupted and replaced with another that began, “What?! Keep breathing baby! How far apart are the contractions?!” His girlfriend was about to give birth.

He dropped me at the first hospital we found in Sparks, still some distance from Reno, for fear that he would run the engine dry and not get me to any hospital in time. I forced him to accept what seemed like twenty bucks for gas, wished him good luck, and stumbled my way into the tiny ER.

There wasn’t much going on that late at night and so the doctor was thrilled to see me. He brought in a whole line of nurses so that everyone could take a look, holding my eye open and excitedly moving a hot light around the wash of color that served as my only indication that the eye was beginning to function. “Look! See? It’s a textbook example!”

In the end they decided I still needed to see a specialist, so they dumped me into a cab and sent me to an ER in Reno. The cab driver was a native. My adventure/stupidity tale wasn’t enough to even get a rise out of him. “Yeah, I grew up out here. I’ve done way more stupid shit than that.”

The last doctor I saw gave me some pain meds and told me to take it easy. “The blood will get reabsorbed on its own and you’ll probably be fine. Just don’t let that blood clot break by doing anything stressful or you’ll be in real trouble.” I thanked him and went out to the lobby to wrangle some kind of ride back to the desert, where I could help break down the Dicky Box art project and haul off our lumber and gear.

I had the wrong number and never did get through to my girlfriend at the time, who was back in Texas. I decided it would just have worried her anyway. Action Girl came through early the next morning though, and as I sat in the lobby watching the blurry sunlight arrive through my hazy red lens she called me from the road outside. In order to get some kind of vehicle to come pick me up, she had agreed to drive a load of medical supplies and donations out to the red cross to be sent to hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans. Apparently this was also the first time she’d ever driven a semi trailer truck or a huge flatbed, and she had no idea how to park it. “I’ll keep circling the hospital until I see you. Just jump in as I go past!”

Fortunately my friends were kind enough to tie me up and refused to let me do anything stupid until I got home to Austin. There I managed to recover OK, although to this day one pupil is slightly larger than the other. I lamented this at first, until Silona pointed out that David Bowie has the same thing going on. Rock star eyes and a good story. Bonus.

I’ve thought about getting Lasik for my eyes. When I travel I worry about being trapped in a country where I can’t speak the language, suddenly blind because my glasses have been crushed somehow. The trouble is that without having safety glasses to protect me from the shrapnel, squash balls, wood chips, leopard pee^* and nail shards that have tried to get to me all these years, I’m not sure how I’d survive!

^*Yes, really. I was about 8 years old. But that’s a story for another day.