/ Travels / USA / Burning Man
Burning Man started on the last day of August in 2009 and spanned a week. Earlier in March, while still in the summer roadtrip planning phase, I had firmly decided the perfect grand finale for my tie-dyed summer 2009 roadtrip of music festivals and concerts, camping, and crazy adventures with my pair of not even one-year old pups, after what was surely to be an incredible five months and over 10,000 miles on the road in my old VW van, was to head north to Reno, and experience the Burning Man Project.
Now most people who have never been to Burning Man often say things like it's just some big party in the desert, or it's a music festival, definitely a big druggie event, a bunch of naked hippies, a bunch of weirdos... Well, yeah, it's all that I suppose. Not so much a music festival with concerts, but there is often music playing somewhere. There's a whole bunch more to Burning Man too.
First off, the environment itself is a grand work of art. Dramatic horizons of mountains in the distance, a huge dusty alkaline sand flat, lovingly known as the Playa, Spanish for the beach. Fence off a few square miles, then bring in about 50,000 people in every kind of RV hauling every kind of mutant vehicle you can imagine.
The huge expanse of the space, the immensity of artwork and all-around wealth of creativity is unbelievable. Truly world class exhibits, not to mention outdoors in a pretty harsh gallery and often interactive. So much fire play and nightly light shows, full of propane cannon blasts. The mutant art vehicles are something else. The pictures hardly do any justice. People dress up in the most outrageous costumes, beyond the imaginations of most humans. It's really crazy, and by far the most interesting week of human chaos and harmony, communal camping and mind-blowing cultural experience on the planet.
Plus the whole event is really a social pseudo-experiment in temporary semi-counter-culture, anti-establishment, anti-money, crazy freedom, hectic community, a bunch of weirdos out in the desert, playa dust in ever crack and orifice, freaks of all flavors, and again it's only a temporary city for a week. After the event, a group of people stay behind to clean it all up, like the whole thing never existed.
Anyway, the Burn is a lot more than anything I can write in a few paragraphs, or even a book. Burning Man is an experience. The fireworks show and bonfire at the end is alone worth the trip. The week prior of mind-bending wonders is all just bonus.
I had to go to Burning Man in my life, at least once!
I bought a ticket as soon as they were available. It was the first ticket that I would buy of what would be dozens of concerts, music festivals, and event tickets over that long summer cruise. Burn or Bust, I was going to Burning Man. Even if it meant 10,000 miles to get there, I was going. That was that.
I'm open-minded, understanding, and have been around the world a few times. I've heard all kinds of talk about Burning Man much of my life, but really, I had no idea what to expect. Looking back, I laugh at how I didn't have even a faintest concept of what it really was before I got there, and I chuckle now everytime I hear someone talk judgingly or begrudgingly about Burners or Burning Man especially if they'd never experienced it.
Burning Man events have been going on for quite a while. Hippie bonfire parties at San Francisco's Baker Beach in the 60's and 70's spurred Larry Harvey and friends to start burning a wooden "man" on the beach. Eventually, these beach parties grew so cacophonic, San Fran couldn't handle the hoopladida, and thus it all embarked on a dusty migration of situationist expression to a new glorious playa and temporary town, Black Rock City rising from the desert flats an hour outside of Reno.
Over these past thirty years or so, Burning Man has evolved into a wildly popular annual event, a dandy dada celebration of crazy, a randy revolutioning idea or many, a costume or naked party, unrestrained horizons, calling out to burners of all kinds from all reaches of the globe and beyond. Freaks be free, aliens and artistas, cappies and commies, with all kinds of expressions intending to burn or be burned, a glorious week of radical inclusion. All are invited.
All the posers like to say that Burning Man has become too commercial, and in some ways perhaps it has, perhaps it's always been. But I didn't find it commercial at all. There was money needed for the ticket, the journey, and the supplies for the week, but once there, the only thing for sale in the whole place was ice, and a small coffeeshop. Both had lines miles long. I volunteered for an ice trailer shift, and that was a serious workout, moving three semi-trucks of block and cubed ice, a few bags at a time. Working in the ice trailer was a nice way to cool off though, and it was one of those fun jobs where you're welcomed like a superhero showing up with that steaming cold bag of ice just in time to save the beers from heat stroke.
There's also a gift culture to Burning Man, where people bring cool little Burning Man trinkets, jewelry, and momentos. I printed one thousand stickers. No ad, no instagram link, nothing but a cool design on a nice heavy-duty UV resistant vinyl sticker.
I planned to hand them out, but not like they hand out the flyers for strip clubs when you're walking down the Las Vegas strip. I wanted each sticker to represent a person I had a genuine interaction, a real conversation, or even someone whom with I just shared some laughs. On the second to last day, I only had about 250 stickers left, meaning that I had talked to and given out my stickers to over 100 people a day.
Unless you hang out in your RV all time, and I suppose some people do, you can't help but meet a lot of really weird and normal, cool and fun-loving, really great people at Burning Man.
Burning Man is definitely one of the very most interesting and generally positive human experiences on the planet. The only way to understand even a little (about Burning Man, or about yourself or anything, really) is to go out on the playa for the week or so.
You will never forget it.
Although I barely survived some of the participatory chaos of it all, mentally and emotionally reaching limits as well as physically, and realizing that this big of an experience can be risky, maybe even too much for many people, and basically everything involved in going to Burning Man can be incredibly difficult, I'm still convinced that everyone should attend. No matter how your week turns out, it will make you a better person. The unique world class art alone is mind-bending.
An experience forged through extreme leave-no-trace self reliance, a challenging, rewarding experiment in temporary community. Daily dust storms, sweaty afternoon siestas, and a strong potential of self awareness leading to an integrity check on your soul. The many gifts you give and receive. Meeting a google-load of strangers in the full sense of the word, strange yet they become instant friends.
It is truly something.
Oh so much eye candy, and music and so many adventures, many miles of good friendly walking, surreal scenes, and more than a few reality adjusting experiences in the T.A.Z. (temporary automonous zone). A big fun wild week, one of the longest yet shortest weeks of your life, new brain-bending adventures and art every day, enchanting people you'd never expect and some you would, with it all hazily, crazily culminating in the world’s biggest bonfire and fireworks show.
I'm still not sure about some of experiences. Even now, it's hard to get my head around some of what I saw, and need the pictures to believe some of it really happened, though so many memories are far beyond what any camera could ever begin to capture. That is, if it even survives the dust. My trusty Canon G7 camera did not. The famous playa dust gets into everything.
It was quite a ride to and from Reno. The lovely week of Burn is without a doubt one of the most intense human experiences on earth, the perfect celebration of a long amazing roadtrip and a great summer. As weird and different as everybody was, even with everybody's wildly varied experiences throughout the week, we all belonged to the same collective, a powerful community, and one as strange as it was accepting.
As they say when you arrive...
WELCOME HOME
)'(
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