While the U.S. explodes a non-nuclear bomb, the walkers stop to express opposition to the spiritual sister of this weapons test. The artist, Joan Monastero, holds her walking staff in the foreground. The walkers use the Tabernacle of The Desert at the Mercury gate line. Las Vegas newspaper coverage of Good Friday event from 2000 . Janet Weil's poem dedicated to our walk, as she could not attend this year.
Some people go into the desert and find themselves in perfect harmony with their surroundings.
This had never been my experience. For the third year in a row I have spent the week before Easter walking in the desert from Las Vegas to the Nevada Test Site. My experience of the desert has been tainted with Apache helicopters flying overhead, discarded beer cans along the side of the road, subcritical nuclear weapons tests, and the threat of a nuclear waste dump for the world. For the past six years the Nevada Desert Experience has organized a 65-mile walk from Las Vegas northwest on Highway 95 to the Nevada Test Site. Each of the three years I have walked has seen an enormous suburban sprawl of unsustainable desert luxury living accommodations.