Burning Man or Bust

Burning Man is coming up. We leave in a week and a half. Yipes! For those who have never been to this festival in the desert, it's pretty hard to describe. Burning Man is like a combination of camping trip, class reunion, art festival, music concert, spiritual retreat, gynormous bar crawl, and hippie love-fest all rolled into one - with costumes and 50,000 of your closest friends. Set in the high Black Rock desert north of Reno, it's usually described as an experiment in intentional community. For most of the year, the desert is as nature intended, a moonscape;  for one week out of the year, it's transformed into a working city, complete with its own economy (no money is exchanged) street signs, a police force, medical personnel, its own rules of conduct, a schedule of events, several radio stations,  a coffee shop, and even a beauty pageant. One Christian gentleman described it as "Satan's Birthday Party." It's more than an art or music festival, more than a retreat, more than a camping trip in a beautiful natural setting, more than a ritual, more than a gathering of hippies and freaks, more than a big party. You have to experience it to understand.

Last year was my second time, after an ill-fated first trip 8 years before after which I swore I'd never go again. A man persuaded me to go again, and this time, with the help of a wonderful new camp of friends, I had a transformative time. Still, Burning Man is not, at least for me, some carefree jaunt of parties and half-naked women. It's tough, too.  In the desert, I confronted my deep inner stuff. My fear of and discomfort around people, my deep inner insecurities, my relationship troubles, old grief, the gaping hole of need that I carry around with me, my judgments of others and myself, my fear of letting go. At the same time, I came back with a desire to live that creatively in the rest of my life - to be my true self, no matter how weird or different.

At Burning Man, you dress how you want - the more creative the better. Almost everything is participatory and nobody tells you what to do (unless you're a real danger to yourself or others). Art and self-expression are everywhere you turn, sometimes to physics-defying degrees. At Burning Man, you rely on yourself and your friends. You haul in your own food and water and necessities and haul the waste out again, and if you run out of something, there's no corner store to go replenish your supply. At Burning Man, there's music, dancing, yoga, meditation, art classes, lectures, nature walks, fire displays, bars, and performances 24 hours a day - and no money is exchanged. At Burning Man, you can't drive your car around unless it's a permitted "mutant vehicle" - a vehicle that's been modified in some creative sort of way.  People-watching gets raised to a whole new level as folks go by in outlandish outfits, sometimes no outfits, and often being transported by strange devices  (stilts, pogo sticks, unicycles, cardboard fish, cupcakes). In the desert, it's hot during the day (temperatures of 115 degrees are being reported) and cool at night, and sometimes the alkaline dust gets kicked up into whiteouts that shroud everything in what looks like talcum powder. Oh, and did I mention that there are no showers unless you bring them (and the water) yourself?

I've heard it described that at Burning Man, everything is love and there are no judgments. I don't think this is strictly true; on the playa - as the Black Rock desert is called - people are the same as they've always been. There are the assholes who get too drunk or high and act like jerks, or just generally don't act with common sense; there are the hotsy sexpots in their 15 revealing outfits a day who stand around and preen, and the lazy ones who disappear whenever work needs to get done. There are the flakes and the users, just like in the 'default world' (as Burners call where we are right now.) But in general, I would say that Burning Man brings out the best in people. Or maybe it's that the people who go to Burning Man are generally more open, more creative, more flexible, and more expressive than others. 

The experience of Burning Man begins when you get in the car and start the trip. You drive further and further from your life, and your entire new life is packed as tightly and efficiently as possible in your car, RV, or van. Civilization passes behind you. As the hours roll by, you pass green trees and lakes, and then you get further into the desert, and things get more sparse. The weather gets hot and dusty. You start to see other Burners on the road - vehicles piled high with bikes wrapped in pink fur, hula hoops,tents,  rugs, and other assorted items, the vehicles often painted with slogans or crude depictions of the Burning Man logo. The highway, your fellow travelers,  and the barren, hot landscape are all you see.

Then you hit Reno and it's like someone dropped a huge pot of gold paint onto the desert floor. It's so surreal to have this gigantic mass of lights and glittering buildings rear out of the desert that it seems like a mirage. In Reno, you finish buying supplies, the way the old timers did - stocking up on the essentials before heading out into the brush.

As you leave Reno at 4 am, you know you're heading into the wilderness. You hope you didn't forget anything. The air is quiet and cool, the stars sparkle. Others are on the move, too; the string of red lights ahead of you on the road tells you that. You're all heading to the same place. The further you go, the more Burners you run into, until they are the only people on the road - Burners and the people who serve them.

The closer you get to the playa, the more of the default world you slough off. Cell phones don't work (much), radio is spotty, there's no e-mail. You no longer care if the dust gets into your hair or your fingernails break. Your body adjusts to the heat. You braid your hair to get it out of your face, and you stop looking in the mirror to check your makeup. Then you're there, and the culture is totally different, with different rules and expectations. The first thing you see that lets you know you're on another planet now is a huge metal dragon the size of a bus - oh wait, it IS a bus! The guy getting something out of his RV in front of you in the line to get in the gate is wearing tight silver bellbottoms, platform boots with flames on them, and has a red mohawk. BMIR (Burning Man Information Radio) is the only station you get and it's pumping out music to welcome the hordes. You're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

A week from this Saturday, I'll be on the playa trail. I hope for myself and everyone else who attends, that it's a vibrant, transformative, creative, challenging, fun, laughter-filled, connecting time. I hope for new friends and for old connections to be strengthened, for joy in the sun- and moonrises, for the time to sit in the shadow of the great, wrinkled mountains and absorb their calm presence. Have fun, y'all!

Not All Little Girls Who Wander are Lost

I’m sitting in the Oakville Grocery on the plaza in Healdsburg on a Sunday evening at 5:30, enjoying a glass of Chardonnay and a salad of greens, currants, chicken, walnuts, and goat cheese. There’s a table of three guys at the other side of the outdoor patio who are trying to figure out why women are the way they are. At another table, an Australian man assails his friends with tales of a woman who’s chasing him even though she knows he’s married. Ah, love.

When I get agitated, I wander. As a little girl, wherever I found myself, on trips with the family, summer camp, staying with friends on their ranch with their horses, I would inevitably find myself wandering off into the wilderness. I would wander and I would daydream, away from people and whatever they wanted from me. I would get lost in the heat and the smells, especially around water. If possible, I’d sit in water or have my feet in it, if I couldn’t swim in it, and I’d just let my mind run, like a Border Collie off the leash.

I’d spin stories in my head of being a brave, strong, beautiful woman. Inevitably I’d be living a life of my own – passionate, creative, unique - and never the same life twice. Sometimes I’d be riding a fiery horse, sometimes I’d be driving some powerful car, but I was always in control. Except when I was being saved by the strong, sexy hero. But just as often, I’d be the one saving him.

I’m always needing to move, like a shark, so this weekend, having no plans and nobody to not have plans with, I decided to get in the car and drive. Yes, I know, the Gulf is on fire with spilled oil and we should cut back on our driving. I’m an environmentalist; I get it. But driving calms me, even more so if I don’t know where I’m going. I had a vague plan: the Napa Valley, possibly Calistoga. It’s warm, looks like Italy, the hills are the color of lions and the air smells of sage and wine.

Of course, it being a summer weekend, I could find no reasonably priced hotels online, but I decided to go anyway. It’s only a couple of hours from home, after all.

Highways are like constant choice-points. The signs taunt us with unexplored roads. I mean, what if I got off at Old Mill Road from Highway 12 North? What does it look like? Who lives there? What experiences might I have? As a kid on road trips – and even as an adult on them – my eyes would always follow those roads that crawl to meet the horizon, wondering where they went and half-wishing I could be on them to find out.

So when I saw the exit to Sonoma, I decided, at the last minute, to take it, and found myself in the midst of a half-marathon. Hundreds of sweaty women with numbers pinned to their shirts, drinking water and wine and shopping in stores that were dark from a recent power outage. In the plaza was a small wine festival, and somewhere, a band pumped out rock & roll standards.

After perusing Sonoma, I got in the car again and drove north. Hwy 12 was clogged with a mysterious backup right around the turnoff to Sugarloaf State Park, so I took that road, and found myself, within 30 minutes, soaking my feet in a shady creek, writing in my journal. After that, I hiked up the dusty hill (Having quick-changed out of my summer dress and into shorts and a tank top) and found a burbling creek of tiny waterfalls tucked into a small canyon. I sat, and as my blood pumped after the climb up the hill, so did my creativity. My heart opened. I thought of that little girl, wandering the hills. The dusty smell of my hike had brought her back to me.

I thought about her wandering, and, my grownup wandering. I felt in that moment, perfectly balanced in the in-between place that is reality: not happy, not unhappy. ;Just there, observing the water-skeeters riding the surface tension of the clear water, doing a dance with my toes. I was shaded by pines and bay and something I couldn’t identify. A delicious little breeze dried the sweat on my arms. Nothing had to happen in those moments, nothing had to be decided. I just sent out the wish that everyone – including myself – could find peace and release. The mood ring I wore that said ‘I Love You’, in that moment became not so much a symbol of one person’s love, but of the love of the universe, which a friend had just reminded me, is always coming to us if we can only see it.

Then I hiked back down the hill, quick-changed back into my sundress, and drove north to Healdsburg, where I knew a little cheap motel off the highway that just might have a vacancy. I had stayed there once on a cold birthday in May a few years ago, running from the fog and seeking the sun. The sweet woman behind the counter greeted me cheerfully, gave me my choice of rooms, and showed me the pool, hot tub, and dry sauna, and then I drove into town, and here I am. The sun is sinking, the wine has warmed my blood, and the light is playing yellow-green in the leaves. ;Three police cars – Healdsburg’s finest – just almost collided in the intersection, en route to some local tragedy. My wine is gone; time for the next adventure.