Story Oasis:  The Beginning

    The need for solitude nagged quietly at my mind and body in my first few years attending the BurningMan festival.  The yearly Nevada festival attracts crowds of 50,000 people each year, and at all times of the day and night are parties, art displays, and unbelievable shows. 
     BurningMan is a beautiful head clearing experience, where strange happenings become the norm, where people stumble upon the new, and where, sometimes the senses become overloaded.
     I found myself searching for a little piece of solitude in the mayhem.  A place to step back and contemplate, before leaping once again into the multitude.
     Never finding my perfect solitude, or, as a writer, a quiet place to write, I realized that I must build it myself.
    Thus the Story Oasis was born.   
    ItÕs first year, 2008, it became, not only a place for me, but also a place for all who wished to find quiet, or a place to tell their story. 
     It became, physically, a sixteen-foot-high eight-sided pyramid, with six desks facing outward, onto the open desert.  Pens, pencils, paper, and typewriters were supplied.  Along with a canvas covering to repel the desert sun, and batteries for LED lights at night.
     As the project morphed from a private concern to a public place of writing, I realized that the stories told needed an audience Ðneeded to be read - and thus was born the website storyoasis.com.  Atop the drawers holding the supplies, was a slot to deliver the finished stories, and so the pages written while sitting in the middle of the desert, ended up on this website for all to read.
     The stories on this site are unedited, they are just simple photographs of each page, placed in order of their delivery to the box.  
     I hope you enjoy the stories: some are beautiful, some are inspirational, one or two scream of hate, and some are just random babbling, but all are worthy of consideration.
    

Upon reading the deposited stories, I was heartened to read someone else reflecting my thoughts on this place.
From an anonymous page collected on Thursday Morning, August 28, 2008:

This is the safest space.  Of all the camps, of all
the vehicles, of all the art sites.

Here is the place were you canÕt be rushed to tell
other peopleÕs stories.  This is not some drink to
be served and enjoyed.

Here is the place of quiet lonely thoughts.  And the
sound they make knocking off the inside of
your head.

And the lights keep flashing, and the people will
come asking of your purpose.  Are they afraid to
create their stories?