I wrote this back in 2010, but it still hold true as to why I Burn. For those of you who have wondered, this might explain it a bit. I have updated it to reflect more recent numbers, but the majority of the essay remains unchanged. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
My Burning Man
I started dating my husband because of Burning Man. My friend Doni had shown me an article about the festival in a 1996 issue of “Wired” magazine and by the end of the article, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that these were my people. They wore costumes like most people wear jeans, they had weird nicknames, they were artists of every type, and in my mind, these were people who would accept me. I needed to go to Burning Man, but I was a newly single mother of two, and as such had to put that need aside for more practical pursuits like paying rent, and putting food on the table.
In 1999 I got the opportunity to really learn about the Burn at a Halloween party thrown by Doni and her husband, Brad. Doni pointed out a man to me, “Do you know Justin? He goes to Burning Man. I bet he could answer questions about it for you.”
I studied him from across the room. He was short for a man, maybe 5 feet 8 inches and well-built with long blond hair and a great smile. He was wearing silver velvet pants with a black shirt and a skinny, silver tie, giving him the appearance of a rock star from the 80s. However his most striking feature was his beard which he wore in a modified goatee that was shaved in the middle and hung down to the middle of his chest. I figured anyone brave enough to make that kind of fashion statement would be fun to talk to even if he knew nothing about Burning Man, so I walked right up to him.
“Hi. I’m Shelley” I said, “You go to Burning Man and I’m going to go, so I want to pick your brain.”
We ended up leaving the party together and talking about Burning Man until the small hours of the morning. Three months later we were dating and the following year we went to Burning Man together where he proposed. We’ve been Burning happily ever since.
Burning Man is an art festival that started in San Francisco in 1986. There are several stories pertaining to why the event started, but I could find nothing that confirmed the rumors I have heard regarding the origins. Then again, to those of us that go to Black Rock City, what’s important is why we are there not that The Man burns. That is to say, the actual burning of The Man is secondary to the reasons we, as individuals, go to participate in his burning.
In 1990 it moved from the beaches of San Francisco out to the Black Rock Desert, where it has been held ever since. When the festival started in the mid-eighties (so the story goes) there were only around twenty-five participants. Last year’s event had approximately sixty-thousand participants. And the Burning Man Organization (BORG) expects that (as long as there are not caps on ticket sales) we will continue to grow in years to come.
When it is in existence, Black Rock City is the fifth largest city in the state of Nevada. We have an airport and a post office (the postmark is two “Man” statues passing off a letter). We have law enforcement and hospitals and public works. There are bars and restaurants and dance clubs and concerts and AA meetings and cars and pedestrians and bicyclists and clothing boutiques and almost anything you could want or need. Black Rock’s similarities to any other city in the world end there.
The most noticeable difference is the physical environment. The Black Rock Desert takes up four hundred square miles of Northwestern Nevada and is one of the largest alkali mudflats in the world. Temperatures on the playa (which is what the locals call the desert) can exceed one-hundred-twenty degrees during the day, and drop as low as forty degrees at night. Nothing grows on the playa; it is desolate and beautiful in its barrenness.
Most people think sand when they think desert. In Black Rock, it’s not sand, it’s dust. Fine, fine dust, the consistency of baby powder and the color of old lace, which gets into everything and is as harsh as the desert itself. Playa dust is drying and corrosive to absolutely everything including clothing, skin, hair, and anything else it comes into contact with. The combination of heat and dust makes the Black Rock Desert is one of the harshest environments on the face of the earth.
But the physical environment can actually enhance the rest of the experience. The height of playa fashion always includes goggles, a dust mask, and a CamelBak, with optional gear including sunglasses and a do-rag during the day and a faux-fur coat and big, black boots for the nights. Because of the prevalence of dust and the absolute impossibility of being truly clean (at least clean in the way that everyday society thinks of clean) there’s an acceptance of other human beings that one doesn’t find in the “real world”.
The separation from the “real world” doesn’t end there. Black Rock City operates on a gift economy. Commerce is strictly forbidden, in fact there are only two places that one can spend money, one necessary, one frivolous. You can buy ice from Camp Arctica, which is completely necessary for the majority of the city, and you can buy coffee from Center Camp Café (which in my opinion is completely unnecessary. Good Burners bring their own coffee) and both of these camps donate all profits to the year-round communities surrounding the desert.
All other services are free. In Black Rock, if they know where to be and when to be there, an individual can eat and drink all day long or until their water runs out (while food and alcohol are free, nobody gives away water and you can’t buy it there, so you’d best be prepared). Forgot a vital piece in your costume? Check out the many clothing boutiques. You might not find exactly what you’re looking for, but it won’t cost you anything except perhaps a smile.
Gift economy does not mean free-for-all, however. While you can find plenty of bars in Black Rock, almost none of them will provide you with a cup; one must bring-your-own-drinking-vessel. Most costume boutiques have a one-per-customer-per-day rule. They’re looking to enhance your experience, not provide it.
As a community, there is a huge focus on artistic expression. In 2009 the BORG provided over $300,000 in grants to artists for their temporary art installations on the playa (financials.burningman.com./chart_2009.html). Beyond that there are hundreds of unfunded art projects on the playa, not to mention art in one form or another, from sculpture to performance art to culinary art, in almost every camp in Black Rock.
Did I mention that it’s dirty? And hellishly hot?
August 25, 2002
I can’t believe it’s been a year since my first trip to Burning Man, and I’m on my way back even as I write this. As the mountain scenery is rushing by my window, I am barely seeing it as I picture in my mind the moon-like surface of the playa.
What the fuck is wrong with me?! While I enjoyed the festival itself last year, I hated the fucking desert! How I can be looking forward to going back with such longing?!? Really Shell, could you be more wishy-washy? You remember all the trouble trying to stay clean? Or how about washing your hair? That was an adventure! Nothing like running out of water halfway thru washing your hair, eh? The joys of trying to refill your shower bag as shampoo dries on your head into a muddy, itchy mess, right? What a party!
Yet every time I’ve thought about it since last year, all I can think about is how I’m going to do it differently so that I can be comfortable out there… Well, that and all the amazing people I met and things I saw. But the people and the creativity are what made the desert tolerable. So how come I find myself missing the actual desert so much? I am absolutely batshit crazy. I mean here I am in the car on my way back to BRC with butterflies in my stomach like a sixteen-year-old waiting for her prom date with the intriguing boy who doesn’t treat her very well. He’s rugged and sexy and he treats her like shit, but somehow she ends up thanking him for it. That’s how I feel about the desert.
So, I’m gonna shake off Shelley and embrace Red. I’m gonna learn to be comfortable in my dirt. I’m gonna remember that I am beautiful. Goddamnit! I CAN DO THIS!!!
Have I mentioned that Burning Man changed my life? Not just in the respect of finding my husband because of it, but in far, far bigger ways: have I mentioned that? My first husband was a violent jerk; he beat me up fairly regularly for transgressions both real and imagined. By the time I left him I was so focused on merely surviving that I had really forgotten what it was to be alive. More than that; I was afraid of living. As if the act of living life to the fullest was something I didn’t deserve because I was somehow less than the rest of the human population. It sounds crazy to those who know me now, but it’s the truth. I even still have those moments, I just deal with them differently now, and it’s all because of Burning Man.
I have to give my current husband some credit; he laid the groundwork for me to even be able to deal with both the physical and psychic environment of Black Rock City. If I had showed up on the playa the timid, scared creature I was immediately following the end of my first marriage, my head might have exploded. As it was, I was completely overwhelmed by the awesomeness of the whole experience, in spite of being all my preparations.
That’s the thing about Black Rock though: there’s no way to be completely prepared for what it is. Everybody has a slightly different Burning Man experience. Even being with someone the entire duration of the festival doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have even close to the same experience. Perception is a funny thing like that and differences in perception are never as obvious in the “real world” as they are out there.
So, I spent a lot of my first Burning Man hating the desert and the dust, but loving the art and the other citizens of Black Rock. Over the course of the week, I shed the shell of fear and anxiety I had worn since my first marriage, and when I came back to reality, I found I couldn’t put it back on again. What’s more, I didn’t want to. I can’t pinpoint the moment it came off on playa, but I distinctly remember the moment that I realized that it was gone.
It was Burn Night, which is the night The Man is burned as the whole city watches, and I had a choice; I could go out to the man with the rest of the city and hope to be able to see The Man burn or I could stay in camp and climb the fifty-foot scaffold tower at the back of our camp and be guaranteed a view of the Burn. The scaffold sounded like the best option, except that since I was sixteen and rode the elevator to the top of Gateway Arch in St. Louis, I had been afraid of heights. But after six days on the playa, I was different somehow, so rather than dwelling on the fact that I was afraid of heights, I took a deep breath, and I climbed to the top of the scaffold tower to see the Man burn.
As I stood on that platform fifty feet in the air with the dry desert wind blowing through me watching the spectacle of The Burn, I realized that I had just conquered a fear I had held for ten years with nothing more than the decision to do so. And it was then that it struck me that I lived much of my life in unnecessary fear and it was time for me to decide to get over it. It was a huge epiphany for me. Somehow, during the course of the week I had stopped worrying about every possible negative consequence to my actions and had started making my decisions based on what was good for me. I said good-bye to that part of my personality as I watched The Man burn, and a feeling of empowerment came over me. My fear would never again control my life.
Now, it’s not like I came home and was completely changed immediately, but I was conscious of my need to change and actually worked at changing over the next year. My friends and family noticed and commented on the change, although no one asked what brought it about. Justin had proposed on the playa, so I think people just assumed that I was happy, and I was, but it was the epiphany that I didn’t need to be afraid that had changed me, not my upcoming nuptials. Somewhere along the way the desert and the dust became associated with feeling alive again, and I found myself reluctantly loving the desert and the dust too.
Is this kind of epiphany that women like me are looking for when they go to Burning Man? Interestingly enough, the women that I asked all had differing reasons for their initial trip to the playa. I was told everything from, “I was looking for a new challenge to conquer” to “My boyfriend and I came together my first year”, to “I came for the art”.
But as varied as their reasons for the initial trip to the playa may be, all of us came back for the same two reasons. My friend Kendall explained the first reason best, “Originally, I went because I had heard so much from so many about how amazing ‘it’ was. Now that I have been there I know how amazing ‘it’ IS. I also know the good, the bad and the ugly and still go (now planning on my fifth year).
“My motivations originally were to go, see and experience. My motivations are now are to go, see and experience with dear friends that have enriched my life in ways that were never anticipated.
“Go for the experience, Stay (Return) for the people.”
And it’s true. The people are what makes Black Rock City like no other city on Earth. No matter how much of a weirdo or misfit you are at home, you’ll fit right in somewhere in Black Rock. Feel fat and ugly? Skinny and awkward? Not in Black Rock! Short or tall, fat or skinny, young or old, we are all beautiful in Black Rock City. The misfit factor has a lot to do with it. A festival of this sort attracts the radical and unusual, and being able to find a way to appreciate another person’s beauty without envy and outside the confines of traditional beauty ideals is incredibly empowering for many participants.
During my first year on the playa, I was sitting in our camp’s community shade structure hiding from the harsh desert sun when this woman asked if she could come share our shade for a moment. She was tall, likely near six feet when flat footed, but today she was wearing platform boots which made her around six and a half feet tall. Her long brown hair was corn-rowed with the tiny braids falling to her trim waist. She had light-green eyes set in a heart shaped face, and a lush, pink-lipped smile that made me honestly forget that I am straight long enough to wonder what kissing her would be like. She was painted to look like a Siberian Tiger, the black and white body paint emphasizing the sheer perfection of her perfectly shaped, perfectly perky breasts, her flat tummy, and her firm butt. She was so intensely beautiful; I had trouble forming coherent thoughts. Then she shocked me by sitting down in the chair next to me and studying me intently for a moment.
“You’re beautiful,” she said to me, “Wow. You’re really beautiful.”
I could feel my jaw drop. This gorgeous creature had just called me beautiful out of nowhere. “I’d rather look like you” I stammered shyly.
“Why? You’re beautiful by your own right. It shines from your eyes” She said this with such heartfelt conviction that all I could do was accept the compliment and move on.
As crazy as it sounds, conversations like that are not uncommon in Black Rock. Everybody seems to be friendly out there. A five minute walk to the porta-potties can take over an hour because there are so many people to stop and chat with along the way. Perfect strangers will greet you as you walk by on the street. People will pull you into their camps to try their food, beverage or participate in their art project.
Lifelong friendships are made in moments out there. Some of my closest friends I’ve spent a total of only one month actually in their physical presence over the course of four years and longer. But these are the people who truly understand me in a way that’s just not possible to achieve in the “real world”. We lower our guard out there because we trust like children that the people we meet are not going to hurt us as we are all so caught up in child-like wonder that a place like this even exists in the first place. Now that’s not to say that there aren’t douchebags on the playa (we call them yahoos or tourists), but for the most part the citizens of Black Rock City are amazing.
The other reason most common among the women I asked was to conquer the desert. Again, this is one of the harshest environments in the world. It’s an alkali desert, and this means that on top of the heat, which can dehydrate and kill you on its own, the alkaline soil can and will dehydrate you further. Not being prepared for such an environment can literally kill you. And it’s not just about having enough water.
Every creature comfort we take for granted in the “real world” has to be brought out to the desert and set up if you want to have it. This means, that if you want shade to hang out in during the day, you must bring a way to create it. If you want to shower or wash dishes, you must set up an evaporation pond, (because your gray water cannot hit the playa lest in interfere with the delicate ecosystem of the Black Rock Desert) and build a shower and sink. There are no trash receptacles so you must be prepared to haul your garbage all the way back home.
August 22, 2009
I’m leaving in a few hours for my ninth trip to BRC, but rather than excited, I’m scared shitless. This year Justin isn’t going to be there, he has to work and can’t get out of it... Even scarier, I’m taking Sabrina (my sixteen-year-old) for her first Burn. I’m nervous enough about being prepared enough for BRC for me alone without Justin, but if I fuck up in any way I could be putting my daughter at risk. I can’t tell her no either, she’s been looking forward to this since she was seven. I’m totally freaking out. Got to stay calm. The playa will provide. You have lots of support and you can do this!
Taking my sixteen-year-old daughter to Burning Man was a big decision for so many reasons. When I started going she and her sister were eight and seven, and because I had such a good time, they were absolutely dying to go themselves. So, after thinking long and hard about it, I decided that sixteen was a good age to introduce them to the playa. Provided they were following some rules; good grades, strong listening skills, and drinking enough water to survive in an environment with less than one percent humidity. To be honest, I expected their interest in the festival to wane over the years, but as I continued to have a wonderful time in BRC, my oldest spent the entirety of her high school career making certain she was able to go to Burning Man.
Suddenly, I was confronted with a reality that had seemed very far away when I’d laid down the conditions that needed to be met in order for her to come to BRC. While most of Burning Man consists of things that I have absolutely no issue with, there is an element of sex and drugs that I was genuinely not ready to have my sixteen-year-old daughter take part in. Then, there was the fact that this experience would change our relationship radically and I was unsure if I was ready for that to happen.
Our first few days in BRC she stuck very close to me and we explored the city together. I saw the art and the desert itself from the perspective of a first-year Burner, and was reminded of how truly incredible it was. As the week progressed, she went out into the city more and more without me and would come back with stories of her adventures and what she’d seen. She stayed away from the sex camps and seemed uninterested in the drug culture. I watched as she transformed from a quiet, somewhat shy teenager into a poised young woman as her self-confidence grew. The experience brought out the best in my little girl, as it had brought out the best in me.
August 31, 2009
I worry too much. Sabrina (now dubbed JekJek) is rocking the desert in a way that I never expected. The dirt and heat don’t seem to faze her at all. She’s hydrating enough, sleeping enough and she says she is comfortable and happy. I packed enough food and water for another two people and we were able to put up most of our camp with just the two of us. I am beyond relieved. I feel like Rosie the fucking Riveter, “Yes, we can!”
I am strong enough to do this, not just for me, but for me and my child. I feel so empowered. I mean, I knew I could do this with Justin, but something about the discovery that I can conquer the desert by myself, with a virgin (who happens to be my kid) is a bit mind-blowing. Maybe the people who call me strong are right. Maybe I’m not as much of a wimp as I think I am. Huh. Who knew?
