A Salute to the Playa

I don't know about your neighborhood, but at this time of year my local hipsters and art punks and young-at-heart people all hit the road for the Burning Man festival. It's held in the Nevada desert on a dry lake bed or playa (PLAH-yah)—an enormous flat natural stage where there are no seats and no spectators, only participants. For Spanish speakers, playa means a beach. A beach with no water sounds like a joke, and maybe the name is an old frontier jape. Be that as it may, playas are part of the list of depositional landforms and of interest to many people besides the playistas of Burning Man.

About playas
Depositional landforms
Desert landforms
Other Earth art

_{Dry Lake Lucerne, California — Geology Guide photo}