As orange as always

We’re still wondering how exactly to describe the experience.  Many people told us a lot about it before, and they all said that you can’t really explain or understand it till you’ve been there yourself.  To an extent it’s true – I think though mostly because everybody lives and experiences the city differently, and so what I will tell you is how I experienced it, but not how my neighbour did.

Black Rock City is where it is, and it is a city – the second largest in Nevada I’m told – for one week every year.  It’s situated in the Black Rock salt plains just outside of Gerlach (about 150km from Reno).

Our friends drove with a minivan down from Vancouver, we flew to Reno, and then together we went for a couple days before the festival to lake Tahoe, South of Reno.  It’s called the Switzerland of California, and the claim isn’t far off – high altitude, pine trees, and lots of ski resorts.  Lake Tahoe is a beautiful area – we went walking, swimming, and had a nice camp site at Sugar Pine Point.

The last day we packed the car – full to the roof inside, and 4 bikes, 2 drums and a chair tied to the roof rack on top.  With about 330l of water in addition to food for a week, and all our camping gear, the car was riding very very low…

Once we got on the 395 north from Reno we started to see the first “Burners” – other cars packed full, some towing trailers with “Mutant Vehicles” (cars, or other vehicles transformed into a mobile piece of art), and by Empire we were in a steady stream, all heading to the one goal: Burning Man.  Off the road and into the desert, the dust we had been told about started to swirl – soon we were standing in the queue at the entrance, the wind blowing from the right, and in minutes a centimeter of dust had settled on the rim of the left windows.  Normally when entering the Playa, first timers are forced to become one with the desert – get out of the car and roll around in the dust, but as it was already blowing hard, and visibility was down to a few meters they spared us that intro as it would happen naturally as soon as we got out of the air conditioned car.  Gregor got out and banged the bell 4 times for us though!

We started driving around the city – it has roads marked at each intersection, and with flags inbetween – looking for a camp site.  The city is like the face of a clock, with the living area between 2 and 10 o’clock, and 10 blocks going out from A (Adaption) to J (Jurassic), so to find any address in the city, just say the time and the letter.  After about an hour we found a place at 8:15 and Humanoid and started setting up camp.  Easier said than done – the wind was blowing hard, we needed our goggles and dust masks right away.  We got the tents up, but after half an hour of wrestling with the sun shades we gave up – our neighbours had made tomatoe sauce with rice and invited us into their big communal tent (with walls – out of the wind!) for dinner and a beer!  It turned out that we found a really nice neighbourhood – our nearest neighbours were really open and fun: we spent a lot of time in their tent with them.  On center-camp side was the 3-Gong bicycle repair camp, anticlockwise was a group with a boat/car, and accross the road were two long-time Burner groups who did a lot of barbequeing and cocktails.

I probably couldn’t even recount our experiences of the week if I tried – after one day it felt like we’d been there for three already.  One of the biggest differences to other festivals is the size: by Wednesday there were over 40000 people living in BRC (Black Rock City) – it takes a good half hour to cycle from one side to the other (and you really do need a bike to get around!).  There are also no events organised by the organisers – all the events are hosted by camps.  Some of the camps are small (5-10), and offer small events/services like bicycle repair, coffees, or a barbeque for 2 hours once during the festival.  Other camps are monolithic and have huge domes hosting live music or DJ’s every night of the week, or see to it that the city is lit (by oil lamps) every night.
There is a guide book which you get on entering the camp which lists all the major events, but I think we only managed to go to 3-4 events during the week by plan – the rest was all luck and coincidence while cycling around.

The Community

One of the biggest aims of BRC is to develop a community.  You live with your neighbours, and with the rest of the city in harmony.  You tend to get to know, and integrate with your direct neighbours more intensely than the rest, but many consider BRC to be their second home (the saying “Welcome home!” was called frequently the first few days!).  It is encouraged and expected to help, share, and give, and with that many people giving, it is sometimes overwhelmingly different from the real world.  Gifts aren’t all things though.  Many camps/people give small trinkets they have made themselves (we had some necklaces), others give services like bicycle repair, hair wash, massage, and others (and this is what it’s really about IMO), give their time and/or expertise.  A bit disoriented, I didn’t really know where to go with it, but opportunity came quickly – I spent a morning with Gregor building an improvised air filter for our neighbours mutant vehicle (Bob – an oversized motorized skateboard shaped like a tongue), and another evening I joined the Lamp Lighters – the group who ceremoniously light and distribute about 300 lanterns on high masts along the main streets every day at sunset.  The community effect is so strong, and the giving so prolific, that very soon you forget any concerns you would have at other festivals – leaving your bag lying around, food and cookers at your camp, no one would think of stealing it.

Gifting / Money

Money is more or less outlawed at the festival.  It is encouraged to give without expectation.  If you really need something more valuable, don’t buy it: trade it.  Maybe you can get some spare parts for your car by trading in a petrol can and some tent posts you have spare.  The one exception is the ice and coffee provided by the organisers – these may be purchased using US dollars.  I must say that I was rather disappointed with this side of the festival, for one that there were exceptions to the sacred rule, and for another that the giving was always from a plentiful reserve.  We packed for BM so that we had enough to eat and drink for ourselves for a week, and understood that we would be sharing what little we had – in the manner that if everybody brings just enough for themselves, and shares that profusely, then everybody will still have enough.  In the end though, some camps took many times more than they needed themselves – enough to open a bar (literally), or serve grills to hundreds.  To be sure, it is a very generous gift to give so much, but it is also laden with gluttony and only accessible to the wealthy.  We filled out the BRC census, and were asked in it how much we had spent on coming to BM.  Tallying up, it was a pretty expensive holiday, and we did it low-key compared to many others.  Some camps with huge bars and events must have spent thousands of dollars per person.  I don’t want to rain on the generosity that we experienced – it was sincere and without expectation – but I do feel that there is a difference between giving your last beer away, and giving a pallet of beer away.

Art / Creativity

I have NEVER seen so much creativity in one spot.  Most days we went out cycling, out on the Playa (the open desert in the inner circle of the city, or out in the perimiter beyond), and would just drift from one installation to the next.  Some were huge, others so small you could stumble over them, but most of all, the art was everywhere.  Not only the installations, but most of the population were dressed in amazing costumes, or had created amazing vehicles decorated to look like a ship sailing over the desert, a crocodile wiggling along, … there were tens of thousands of people, thousands of bikes, and hundreds of art installations, all playing on the theme of the year (Evolution), or working with the sand, dust and sunshine of the day, or glowing in the dark of night.  To name just a few of my favourites:

The baloon man: most evenings a man would get a really long (~400m) line, and tie helium balloons to it every few meters, and an ultra bright LED light to each balloon.  The line would snake, glittering blue, over the Playa, low over the desert in higher winds, or dissapearing into the sky when it was stiller.

The Tunnel – a virtual tunnel made of arcs of tubular plastic in the desert.  With simple lighting, far out in the endless desert, you stepped into the tunnel and suddenly felt enclosed… a very tricky play on the senses with shape and light.

Mirrors – a bent wall of broken mirrors in the desert.

The sound net – a webbing of wire which reacted to human proximity with various pitched sounds.

The burns

On Saturday the Man was to be burned.  At 8:30pm we were at our camp, and it was windy as hell.  Our neighbours, veterans of many years, said that it wouldn’t be burned with such wind, but we wanted to be sure not to miss it, so we doned our masks and headed out to find the man.  It turned into the worst dust storm of the week – half way out to the man we couldn’t see our feet any more!  We turned around, looking first for a toilet, then for shelter.  At last I was able to play my trump card: GPS held centimetres from my eyes, hand in hand, we stumbled on blindly making a bee-line for the city limits at 09:00 (address, not time).  We took refuge in the Crystal dome (empty accept for us) for a while, and then looked for somewhere with people.  We found another small dome with friendly faces who took us in and gave us drinks till the storm passed.  When the storm passed, it dissapeared with hardly a trace.  Accept for the soft dust drifts, the air was clear and still, and all around us people started crawling out of their refuges and making their way to the Man.  The fireworks were grand, and finished with a huge fireball engulfing the man and structure around.  This probably should have lit him in a dramatic finale.  Unfortunately the flames didn’t catch (probably some problems with the dust), and we watched as the crew ran around throwing red fares into the foundations, eventually getting a flame lit, licking up the nest like structure around the Man.

On Sunday the temple was burned.  We walked around to the far side and got a front row seat.  While we were waiting, someone behind us started saying “are you seeing that?  Red lights in the sky!”.  We looked up, and many voices around confirmed that they were seeing it too – small red lights drifting around the sky like lost satellites… The lights spread out, around us, started moving faster… and then they started to flare out as massive, slow shooting stars!  They were sky divers parachuting with flares – a very cool effect!  On queue, as the last flare went out, the temple was lit.  The temple itself was a beautiful work of art, cut from ply wood with intricate shapes and light effects.  Over the last week it had been covered in text, had many personal items laid in it.  The temple is a place to let go, to lay thoughts or items, to say good by to people who have gone, and by the end of the week it is a collage of sadness.  As the temple lit, the Playa became still, around us people were crying, and in the stillness the huge flames, crackle and crunch of the burning wood, and whirlwinds whipping out from structure were all the more dramatic.

Return to reality

We started packing on Sunday during the day, and did the last packing as the sun rose on Monday morning so we were on the road out at 7am, trundling along with many other dusty cars and trucks.  It was odd to see the city on Monday morning, half the tents were gone, the spaces between opening, the street signs already gone, and the people evaporating in the dust to leave the desert to be again for the rest of the year.

We accelerated our return by staying a night in Reno – “The smallest big city” (in other words, lots of bling and lights in a small space).  We had lunch in a Casino buffet – endless mirrors, ringing machines, and money, and an endless buffet of food and drink – the contrast couldn’t have been greater!  A night in a motel, several hours of washing and wiping – trying to get the dust out of every crevice, and we were on track to “normality” again.

The question lingers, what we took away from Burning Man.  Apart from a hand full of trinkets, mostly experience.  It was very different to what I had expected.  I had expected more (or more diverse) music, a more frugal and resource aware lifestyle, and giving in a smaller, more personal way.  I didn’t expect so much art and diversity, nor for it to be such a multi generation and family event.  It has made me much more aware of how much residue I leave wherever I go.  The community and generosity was impressive, though I think that the situation is a bit artificial – it isn’t difficult to be open, friendly, and have time for everyone when you have all the resources you need prepared for the week, and are all set for a week of party.  Some of the way of living in Black Rock City can be transfered to the real world though.  Why not help a stranger if you can?  Why react to someone differently if they’re toppless with stars stuck to their nipples, or wearing a costume of beer bottle lids, rather than jeans and t-shirt.  Some days it would be nice to go out of the house as a pirate.  In BRC, the elements are aggressive.  The people aren’t.  My hands and feet still have callouses healing, and my tool box is full of rusty tools, just from a week in the desert, but I experienced more friendly people and interesting discussions in that week than any other week.

This was a long text about Burning Man, but even with the images, it’s still just a fraction of the whole picture.  Go there and experience it for yourself!

Tags: 2009, burning man, desert, festival

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 03:22 and is filed under By Robin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.