What is Burning Man?

_ Burning Man is almost impossible to describe to those who have never experienced it.  To arrive at Burning Man is to have the sensation of having landed on another planet.  Not a barren less landscape like Mars but a moonscape populated with other worldly characters dressed in whatever finery imploded in their imaginations. For one week, out of the flat chalk white terrain of the Nevada desert known as the playa, in which literally nothing grows, arises an entire tent city to accommodate the fifty thousand denizens who will sift through its gates.  Like every other American city, Black Rock City even has its own fully functioning post office – you can send post cards to anywhere in the world.  Unlike any other American city, there are no shops, there is nothing to buy – the whole place is run as a gift economy.  People just give away what they want to offer, whether it’s a slice of watermelon or a one hour massage.  The primary ways of getting around is either by foot or peddle power and the only motorized vehicles permitted to roam the open playa are the “art cars” and BLM Ranger wagons.  Art cars are mutant vehicles dressed up in themes.  Some are as tiny as a golf cart; others the size of the Space Shuttle.  A central part of the Burning Man experience is self-expression.  Wear what you wouldn’t dare wear in the default world or don’t wear anything at all. Explore your sub-personalities; cut your shadow side some serious slack.  There’s a theme camp catering to every deviant strain under the sun from Happy Hynie Village to the Polyrhythm Workshop where you can “train your body to maintain two separate pulses simultaneously “ whatever that means.

This was my seventh Burn. Why do I keep coming back in spite of the scorching temperatures, dust storms, cracked skin, bouts of dehydration and long lines getting in and out?  Where else in the world can I experience myth and dream on the scale of Burning Man in the modern world?  Burning Man is a mythic landscape.  In the default world, most of us experience fantasy in books and video games and science fiction on the silver screen and TV.  Burning Man is the only place I know where both spill out copiously into one’s immediate external sensory reality.   One moment a giant dragon passes by billowing fire. In the next, someone offers me a snow cone laced with tequila at no charge, of course.  Then I run into a friend I haven’t seen in five years who’s dressed like big bird (he recognized me); we both hop onto an art car shaped like a mini Hawaiian island and glide across the desert, hovering over the sand like Luke Skywalker. As we exchange stories from previous burns we pass by art installations, the scale of which the typical urban landscape cannot embrace.  This year’s Temple of Transition was the tallest non-foundational wooden structure to have ever been built by man, fusing architectural elements from all the world’s major faiths.  Burning Man is a living museum where every visitor is part of the artscape.  In a nutshell, at Burning Man, for one week, I feel like I truly am dreaming awake!