I recently did something cool. I went to Burning Man.
My wife and sister went last year, and after they came back they wanted to go again. I was on the fence for awhile about joining them since I didn't think it was my scene. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I shouldn't close my world off to potentially amazing experiences because they don't fit my preconceived notions I have about what I think I like to do. So I went, and I'm glad I did.
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| Looking good! |
The past few months were spent gathering supplies, making costumes, and preparing for a week of radical self-reliance. Since nothing is sold at Burning Man (except coffee and ice), you have to bring everything with you and plan to take it back out with you (except pee and poo). After plenty of prep we began the long drive up to Sacramento to drop off the progeny with her grandparents. Then we drove through Reno and turned north towards the barren dry lake-bed that gets turned into the most creative city in the world for one week a year.
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| Our house for the week |
We arrived during a brutal dust storm and after 6 hours of waiting made it to our camp. We camped with a group camp that my sister & wife had been a part of. It was a pretty eclectic group, but everything about burning man seems to be built upon eclecticity (and not electricity, since there is no power).
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| Out on the playa |
The cool part of the event is that everyone does something unique and creative, and it's all done as a gift to the community. Some Canadians put up a street hockey rink for anyone to come play. Another camp brought trampolines to jump on. There was a bike repair camp, a camp that gave out poutine at midnight, a camp that would take glamour shots of your genitals and hundreds more. They pretty much had it all. And there was no shortage of camps that ran bars and were out in the dusty streets recruiting people to partake in all the booze you could guzzle.
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| Nighttime on the playa |
While wandering the various camps was fun, the real joy was going out into the desert where the Man is and so are all the great art installations. At nighttime the the barren desert becomes awash with neon lights, thumping beats, bikes and art cars which are almost impossible to tell they were at one time vehicles.
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| One of the art cars |
The amassing of so much culture and art, with an expectation of it being all temporary and there to be experienced made me really see why immediacy is such an important component of the event. I really tried to embrace as much of the event as I could, and try some things I've never done (I went rock climbing!), do some things that were right up my ally (the canned fish/meats symposium was terrific!), and still avoided other events (shoving guacamole ingredients up your butt and pooping out fresh guac - I'm not making that up). I guess I have a reason to go back.
