Over the weekend, mediator Ron Kelly planned to put on his full-length white linen suit and his huge green hat — “three feet in diameter” — and set up his booth in the desert, so he could do what he describes as some of his most interesting work.

For the past six years or so, Kelly has made for the Black Rock Desert of Nevada to join the annual Burning Man festival, an eight-day celebration of artistic and cultural fancy that has in the past drawn up to 25,000 participants.