A lot has been written about Burning Man. And a lot of photographs have been taken of this event. But to capture what Burning Man is all about, you simply have to attend, and probably more than once.
This extraordinary event takes place in the Nevada desert, on a dry lake bed literally in the middle of nowhere. It seems to morph from beneath the dusty playa one week a year to become the third largest city in Nevada. Roads appear, city blocks are defined, street lamps lit, DMV, bars and discos emerge, health spas, training centers, art instillations and virtually every element of a city spring to life. But it is more a city of the future or maybe a city only imagined. It is more something out of Alice in Wonderland than a city with any normal bearings.
I knew I was in the land of the mad hatter when my first trip into the city after setting up camp, I was following a moving gazebo full of people having a grand time as it motored down the street past a man playing a tuba that was on fire. Yeah this gazebo was not in someone’s back yard where it should be, but rather someone’s imagined mode of transportation. In fact there are absolutely no vehicles that resemble a car or motorbike. During the week I saw full scale pirate ships, metal oversized ducks, a butterfly with a wing span of 20 feet wafting down the street, entire homes complete with trailing outhouse, a peacock that would raise or lower its colorful plumed tail at will and much more. There was even a 1920’s dinner serving grilled cheese sandwiches, coffee and cheesecake. Literally hundreds of these fanciful vehicles constantly flowed down the street. It is not unusual to see a flamingo whose neck rose 50 feet into the air. There were, of course, such mundane concepts as riding a fish down the street, dragons, gigantic grasshoppers and anything else you can possibly imagine. These “art cars” are all for public use. If they are headed where you are headed, then jump aboard. And at night they are all lit up with neon like lighting and flashing colored bulbs that would make Las Vegas envious.
Art seems to emerge from the dust itself. I am not talking about a few small experimental pieces; I am talking about pieces that would be a prized possession of any city that could display them. There are playful, interactive pieces that spew fire but never burn. There are pieces that defy gravity in grace and beauty. Cast bronze pieces you can climb in, around and through that tower over the city. Perhaps the centerpiece of the art pieces was a beautiful lady in an articulated dancing pose with only the tip of her foot balancing on the desert playa. No small piece, this graceful lady towered over 4 stories tall, and glowed with light from within itself. It seemed to defy gravity with no guide wires or other visible means of support to hold it up in the harsh desert winds that can easily exceed 50 mps in an afternoon. The engineering of the piece itself was a work of art.
While this city has something for everyone, what it doesn’t have is money. Once you step foot inside the city gates, you pack your wallet away. Everything is gifted by others. Whether it is waffles, crepes and pancakes in the morning or root beer floats, snow cones, ice cream in the afternoon, it is all given freely to anyone who shows up.
Classes and seminars are offered from dawn yoga to way into the dawn of the next day disco parties. Some of the biggest dance venues with video and sound systems that rival any rock star concert pulsate with deep base and energetic crowds. As the setting sun pushes its last beams of light through the cotton clouds, the city lights up from one end to the other. I climbed one of the tall towers and saw this metropolis spread out before me. It is a vast panorama that stretches for miles. No wonder it is impossible to see even a fraction of what this city has to offer in a short week.
To be sure, it is a harsh environment out on this dry lakebed. Winds can come up at any time and whip the fine sand into frenzy so strong that you can’t see 3 feet in front of you. These whiteout storms can last for minutes or days. Fortunately this week was relatively calm with only a scattering of dust storms and twisters. But the harsh storms are all softened by the generosity and warmth of the human spirit that is often not found in the shadows of modern life outside the city gates. Humanity is embraced in abundance. As I rode my bike down the street, complete strangers would offer me some bacon and eggs for breakfast or mist me with a cooling spray of water in the hot afternoon sun, offered food, music, companionship, jewelry often referred on the playa as swag and a place to hang out during a storm.
There is one more element about this event that I have to explain. What ever you need for the week you bring it in yourself. Since nothing is for sell in this city, if you forget something, you have to rely on someone else gifting it to you. That can be problematic for things like a forgotten toothbrush. (No, I remembered mine.) The call it radical self-reliance. And just as important, everything you pack in, you have to pack out. Yes everything. There are no garbage cans at Burning Man. No littered wasteland after this event. Every scrap of paper, every stray thread, every torn tissue, everything is taken back. They call it MOOT, matter out of place. Camps are scoured for the finest microtrash. Even tire marks from sitting cars are carefully erased. When this city disappears at the end of the week, any signs of it also disappear. The only thing left on the playa is fine dry sand and the heat of the desert.
With this feeble description of Burning Man comes a disclaimer. If you think I have given you a sense of what is out there on the dry lakebed, I haven’t. Simply put, to understand Burning Man, you have to experience it yourself. It is something that “burners” have to come back year after year, to breath in the spirit of Burning Man.
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