On being a stilt-walking nomad at Burning Man

This year was my sixth and most laid back burn thusfar. For most, Burning Man is anything but relaxing. Given the need to haul food, structures, and clothes in and out of a featureless desert, those who call it “recreational moving” are not far off the mark. However, after a summer consisting of biking around Lake Tahoe, exploring gold rush country, a trip to Thailand, a wedding in New York, and preparing for an extended trip throughout Southeast Asia, relaxing is just what was needed. We packed up our trusty hatch-back and drove out to the playa via North Tahoe – a much prettier place to spend the night than Reno.

Easy going doesn’t mean uneventful, though, and there are always a number of highlights;

• Camp Nomadia – Even before we arrived on playa, a yearly ritual is stopping at one of the many Indian taco stands along Rt. 447 north of Reno. In a shining moment of serendipity, the couple we sat across from turned out to be Cherie & Chris, whom I had already been conversing with over email for a vagabonding case study. I stopped by their camp for a ‘Nomadic Happy Hour‘ a few days later and met some exceptional people.
• Bliss was stunning. Beautiful. Sensual. Awe inspiring. I experienced the barest sense of what a DJ must feel when spinning a good set while playing with Syzygryd one night. The Temple of Flux challenged one’s idea of what sacred space could be, and when it burned it was a volcano of flame reaching up to the heavens.
• Late one morning, a breath of fresh air as two of Liz’ friends from New York that she hadn’t seen in six years stopped by for a visit. Their bubbly warmth was a wonderful way to start the day.
• Summer Camp! – It was absolutely the best group of old and new faces with the best theme that we’ve ever camped with. There was enough infrastructure that the kitchen was usable and well laid out, with sufficient shade structure during the day, and completely set up by Sunday night. I enjoyed sharing music and cornbread with everyone, in camp and to passersby. Our most successful event was a letter-writing day with 300 cards being sent, including one to Liz’ mom and to our awesome subletters.
• Incoming mail! - Not only did we send out mail, but we received a postcard from our good friend Rich back in Boston! Receiving mail on the playa is awesome!
• After 5 years in a tent that heats up too early and blocks neither light nor sound, we built a hexayurt this year! It took 7 pieces of 8×4 insulation and a bunch of aluminum and “bi-directional filament” tape, but we built something that kept us cool and dark. However, a completely new weather anomaly in the form of RAIN during the first couple of days did still leak through seams and underneath. This frustration was rewarded by THE MOST AMAZING DOUBLE RAINBOW EVER.
• With some purple nail polish, I re-intentioned a bottle of San Pellegrino with “Potential” at the WaterZone water bar.
• One afternoon I took some time for myself and rode my bike out to an edge of the city I had never been to – the trash fence out past 2:00. Ostensibly I was looking for the elusive Black Rock Airport. What I did find was the edge of “open camping”, an the area of open playa beyond the end of the last street where the most remote denizens of Black Rock City pitch their small camps. Like my first year, I hopped the fence to enjoy a stolen moment outside the city walls (about three feet tall) and was rewarded with endless playa running up to the mountains and touching the sky.
• Then there was the CRAZY WEDNESDAY. We woke up mid-week to watch the sunrise, and left camp around 7am. We then drove back to the Bay Area, arriving around 2pm. After a quick shopping trip, a load of laundry, and showers, we drove into San Francisco so that Liz could attend a final exam potluck. We then left at 7pm, and arrived back at camp by around 2:30am. We stayed up to watch the sunrise again, and it was almost as if the day never happened.
• Perhaps the most unexpectedly awesome thing was STILT WALKING! Borrowing a campmate’s Powerisers, I took to them like a natural. After about 20 minutes of walking 5-10 feet, I was strolling down the streets with my trusty unlit fire staff in hand, stopping at bars and posing for pictures along the way.

For a relatively quiet week, there are still so many wonderful memories, even just hanging out in camp, or spending a couple of hours riding an art car and listening to Alternative/Christmas mash-ups.

Burning Man continues to be a unique and worthwhile experience which celebrates both the absurd and the creative.

The land of a thousand ridiculous quotes

After a three year hiatus we returned to the playa. The last burn that Liz and I had been to was in 2006, and it was amazing and wonderful. We took a break from Burning Man in 2007 and went to Morocco, trading the Black Rock Desert for the Sahara, which was magical in ways that we still feel every day. Last summer we got married and spent our honeymoon diving in the warm crystal clear waters of Fiji. This year, it was time to go back home to the place that we’d first met.

Every year is different, that much is certain. Unable to get more time away from work and school, we took just two days and made a long Labor Day weekend out of it. This is much easier from San Francisco. In Boston, one not only has to buy their event tickets, but there is getting plane tickets, negotiating transportation to and from the airport and the playa, packing a few weeks earlier to ship stuff out in a cargo container, and waiting a few weeks on the other end to get your stuff back. Here in the Bay Area, it’s as easy as packing up the car and driving a few hours – in our case, 6 hours there, and 10 hours back.

After barely wrapping up and handing off open issues at work, I grabbed a cab to Liz’ school, and we set off. There was a minor setback in the form of a collapsed air hose in our car, but one good mechanic and 45 minutes later we were on our way again. No pilgrimage is without obstacles to overcome. We arrived just before 11p and found our way to Container Camp in AutoSub’s backyard. The city was warm and bright beneath an almost-full moon, and we wandered the inner-playa for several hours before returning to camp, where we threw our air mattress into one of the containers to crash for the night. The next day we set up our tent and explored the city, visiting friends along the way. We were treated to an astral headwash and hung out at a water bar. We continued our city wandering in the evening, stopping to admire a laser show against a white-washed RV. Tanya and her husband Jim invited us to stay awhile and share some red wine, while her sister Dina made sure there was a good music mix of classic and modern R&B, and a fairly inebriated newlywed couple dropped in to provide us all with amusement.

On Friday, we hopped on an armadillo art car with a good techno DJ, and then relaxed in the shade of Spanky’s Wine Bar where we watched a naked man run around the bar, slapping his ass and saying “I’m a dirty little bitch!“, all for a tshirt. That night, we wandered the inner playa with friends, determinedly not watching the gothic rocketship fly or blow up. The cubatron dazzled our eyes, the waffle trees danced around the Man, and we watched one of our friends fall off of a five-person see-saw. There were such quotes as “..just to the right of the two red giraffes“, “Look, a dancing strawberry!“, and “Where is here? Over there!” I love Burning Man, if for no other reason than it fosters a thousand such ridiculous quotes over the course of a week.

The dust storms that had begun in the night continued throughout Saturday. We donned the tagelmusts that we had purchased in Morocco and trekked across to the other side of the city to visit a friend and her chicken. Sadly, we failed to meet up with them for the Burn, but we eventually found our way to a spot far enough away from the art cars to have some solitude, but still near enough to feel the heat of the fire, and we watched the dancing trees turn into pillars of flame. Then we walked to the Temple – a three-story wooden flower with a core of fire – which was even more beautiful up close than it had been farther away. We shared a quiet moment, remembering lost family.

With Sunday came the inevitable beginning of the Exodus as everyone packs up their camps and gets in line to leave, listening to BMIR on 94.5 as thousands of people try to leave via a single two lane road. We decided to leave early and spend the night in Reno, stopping for an Indian taco along the way, and enjoyed a shower and a good night’s sleep before heading out the next morning the rest of the way towards San Francisco, playing “spot the Burners” along Interstate 80 by the amount of playa on the cars, or whether the bicycles had fur. We regretted missing the temple burn, but it meant that we got home before dark on Monday with time enough to recover a little.

It was a good burn but it was too short. Four days is a nice long weekend, but it’s never enough to get settled into a place. We didn’t even make it into the deep playa this year. But as always, there are a handful of moments that are so unique, and so powerful, that it’s all worth it.

Published again!

I continue to be amazed that twice a year or so, someone asks me for permission to use one of my Burning Man photos.

This time, Burning Man: Fact & Fiction.

(Mine is image #3)

a lollipop, a shotglass, a bell, and a rocket..

these are the things that I came away from the playa with this year, among the other countless memories of experiences.

this was the best Burn ever. it was exactly perfect. it was totally chill, and yet we managed to see and do so much. and while there was much missed, there always is, and I have no regrets for it, save for taking so few pictures (up soon). but even that, I have come to terms with the fact that I’m living life rather than photographing it, and that pleases me. “ya, I don’t have any pictures of the firedancers at the Burn. because I was one of them.” (which is also true of last year, but I was drumming instead of spinning.)

Burning Man is important. it shakes up your worldview just enough to keep you engaged and active, looking at the world differently. it shows the capacity for creation of something out of nothing, knowing that it will all go back to nothing again.

there is art, there is community of the many, and of the few. there are hugs from unexpected people, grilled cheese, and mushroom frittata. there are naps in a cardboard sanctuary and a cupcake, pasties during the day and bundled walks at night. there are fortunes and secrets written and read in the dark of night. you could find a reggae spaceship, or a belgian badger (they would hate me for saying that, but I am truly in awe of what they did.)

there is Fire. everywhere. from your camp’s stove, to fire-breathing dragon art cars, to jets of burning fuel a hundred feet in the air, to a corner burn barrel, to a fire spinner in the night, to the burning heat of structures as big as a stadium going up in flames. there is also playa, that irritates the skin, and sometimes blocks the sun (and 2 feet in front of you as well.) but it is that same playa, that when whipped up into a funnel with the wind, creates dust devils that play across the city, and with that texture that only Burners know, touching it brings us back. that silk between your fingers..

there were so many stars at night, with Orion welcoming in the early fall. I saw three sunrises in a row, each one unique and treasured. I had two of the best trips of my life, two days apart.

and it was WARM this year! my god! Burn night especially, we were lying out in deep playa, for an hour, not wearing coats, just watching the city from afar. and I expect most people didn’t notice, but just there, for a few minutes in the middle of a dance, it rained.

Burning Man is an important place to exist. I may not go every year, but I am very glad that it is there to go to if I want to. it shakes things up, and keeps things fresh. it invigorates. it lets one know what is possible. the beauty that can be found is truly unique. it excites you, and if you let it, it can calm you. that latter is something I’ve only managed to come to after 4 years.

it was a good Burn.

and now, thankfully, I can take a shower, pee in something other than a jug, and enjoy my own music.

published!

I just found this waiting for me in my gmail box..

(for those just tuning in, I had gotten a query from a woman in the Netherlands who had found my Burning Man gallery, and asked if she could use one of my images for the cover of her book. after some back and forth negotiation on which one to use, it was submitted back in March. apparently now the book is out, with my picture of the 2004 temple burn on the cover. squee!)