Impermanence in the dust

The day we set out for the Temple a dust storm engulfed everything; we could scarcely see a meter from us. Bikes and people and towering sculptures emerged from the whiteness of the air like visions, and if I raised my eyes I could see the stark blue sky beyond the dust.
We were in the Nevada desert, in Black Rock City, the closest to an oniric vision I had come upon in my life.
Most people were leaving the playa, dust-masks in place and colorful scarves wrapped around their face: with no signposts and no roads, it was easy to lose your way – and, sure enough, we did. It was as if the whiteout had swallowed the artwork strewn across the playa and transported it elsewhere, leaving us wandering a desert that was truly empty. Me and my friend strolled forward, loving the uncertainty of being lost together in the surreal landscape.
Black Rock City came at a peculiar time in my life. Many are struck with some sort of epiphany, temporary or otherwise, while there. I did not need it, the dreamlike city and its strange society were simply witness to the conclusion of a radical change begun months prior to my going there. I knew who I wanted to be and what I desired, so the desert and its white dust need not tell me. I was there to say goodbye to the person I had been.
Our destination, the Temple of Grace, was far from where we had started.
It is a place made sacred by what people choose to bring to it and by the emotions they imbue it with. It sits there in the dust and welcomes all and everything, be it pain or joy or hope. It starts as an empty wood structure and goes out in a blaze ten days later, receptacle of prayers, farewells, regrets, wishes.
To see the Temple emerge from the billowing dust was a vision I will not forget.
I placed my scrap of paper under a pebble, a folded yellow thing whose insides were scratched by black angry marks, and let go. I looked at the intricate wood carvings surrounding me, the dust coiling around them like smoke.
It might seem odd, to build a thing of beauty and then burn it, yet I always thought of impermanence as an essential characteristic of precious things. It is not a feature we would choose if given the chance, it is forced on us but, nevertheless, I feel that without it we would appreciate less. I know I took everything in, savored each instant, each vision, each moment and feeling, in hopes of etching them in my memory, all the while knowing they would eventually fade – and learning to be okay with it.