Times magazine named Burning Man a top 100 important place to visit on Earth in 2010. If you think Burning Man is a music festival, a drug induced freak show, or just something that stoners do, you are 100% wrong. I left my house on Sunday and did not return until the next Wednesday, a week and a half.
The line was ridiculous to get in. When we finally got into the greeters gate they told us “Congratulations, you’re finally home.” I did not know how that would ring true.
You don’t pay for a damn thing at Burning Man. There is not anything provided for you, no water, or food, or booze, or anything, so they say. They want everyone to come prepared with their own means of survival. Radical Self Reliance.
I have never been in a world where you are completely free to do ANYTHING. Radical self-reliance, and radical self-expression are the mottos. People are naked; people are riding bikes, and dancing. People build and make their own things, they don’t rely on society or “the default world” to manufacture them. There are art cars. Vehicles people make to look like anything they want, fish, colorful mushrooms, big fuzzy busses, dragons, anything. Some were fuzzy and you could lie down on them after hours and hours of dancing your heart out. Some had blankets for when it got super cold during the wee hours of the night/morning. Some had poles and music, some were birdcages that you could stand on, some were even magic carpets. Anything you can dream of, people had dreamed of and made.
During the day you rode bikes through out the city. Black Rock city is Burning Mans city. It happens once a year during Burning Man and is the 3rd largest city in Nevada when the event takes place. It all started 28 years ago with 20 people on the beach of San Francisco watching a sculpture of a man burn. Last week it was 70,000 people gathered for a week of giving, love, self-reliance and self-expression, and absolutely no judgments.
I camped with a crew from Berkeley, CA. We had a great time together. We went out together, one night in particular and danced on a vibrating stage, danced on platforms with green gas, saw a British guy with a t-shirt and jiggly butt say, “My shirt is too cool for pants” and thought nothing of him dancing right next to me.
Fred, my ex boyfriend from Australia came to America just for it. The first night I was thinking about him because we weren’t together. The second day I found him and we were together for pretty much the whole thing. Something happened in the desert between us and all of the people at Burning Man. An unexplainable energy coming from the universe and flowing between us.
Friday night we saw the man burn. A giant 92-foot sculpture of a man made out of wood and wires. To me it symbolized the man, the one that controls your life and makes you do things, the government. We saw him burn down to the ground with a long show of fire works.
There was a temple that burned down on Saturday night. The temple brought about a sense of silence and serenity. By the last day it was written all over with peoples prayers, hopes, dreams, goals, wishes, confessions, apologies, and pictures. Walking through it and reading it all makes you cry. When it burned all 70,000 people sat in silence and watches as their wishes and words were let out into the universe.
We were originally going to ride back to Las Vegas with my friend Nate on Tuesday. But my new friend David was leaving on Monday and instead of driving 9 hours to Vegas was driving 2 to Reno. Fred and I hitched a ride with him. Granted we stood in line for 7 hours before entering the road. He let us sleep at his house and the next day took us to see Lake Tahoe. We went to some secluded area on rocks with a few beers and swam and chilled all day. Then we went to some great Mexican restaurant and Fred and I checked into a hotel and flew home early the next morning.
No matter how hard I try to explain every aspect of it, its not going to happen. The reader is never going to fully understand the phenomenon that is Burning Man by reading or looking at pictures, no matter how many. Just know that it has changed the lives of so many people and that it is different from anything you can imagine.
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