Seeking An Extraordinary Life - A Travel Journal

Tonight is First Friday, an art-focussed event held in Las Vegas' older downtown area on the first Friday of every month. It was started by and continues to be heavily supported by the Burner community, and incorporates musical performances, art shows and other events. Deidre and I head for the Aruba Hotel, which is playing host to N.O.I.S.E (Network of Immersive Sensory Entertainment), a multimedia evening and one of First Friday's major nexi (nexuses?).

We meet Shay and Kim at the hotel itself around 10. The back room of the Aruba is already a buzz of activity when we arrive, with a stage and instruments being set up in the center, easels all round the walls and a good crowd already present. Many of the attendees are familiar, welcome neo-hippie types, with beards, dreadlocks, handweave and tie-dye being well represented. We meet several fellow burners and hear about some of the events coming up in the community, including (joy!) the Las Vegas Santa Rampage, the local Santarchy event!

The theme of the evening is the mandala, and variations on the theme are visible everywhere as artists settle in to work on paintings, drumskins and decorations, and upstairs on the balcony a walkable foam maze based on the Labyrinth of Crete has been laid out on the floor, along with other decorative maze designs exhibiting mandala principles.

The band, when they come on, are an excellent local psychedelic blues/rock outfit called Psychic Pussy, who hammer out some serious noise with virtuoso lead guitar and very catchy rhythms, and get much of the crowd moving. After their first set a drum circle of over 30 members forms by the stage and builds up a wonderful wall of percussive sound. They are joined by several talented female dancers who weave up and down within the circle, creating a beautiful visual counterpoint to the interweaving beats.

The drum circle is followed by a second half from Psychic Pussy, and a DJ picks up the slack when they finally move off. Deidre, Shay and Kim are finally exhausted and head off to catch some kip, but I'm still wide awake and in the mood for dancing, and decide to stay till the end. The event finally winds down at around 2am, but a residual drum group forms on the back porch as I drift out and I stay to watch and dance a little until it finally breaks up. I wander on round the corner to the Art Bar, to outward appearances a commonplace biker bar but with an amazing lighted star of metal rods on the roof simulating an explosion or wave transmission, inventive commissioned graffiti and art on the outer walls and more displayed inside.

Normally the bar would have live bands playing all night on First Friday, but today apparently they've all called off for various reasons and the bar's dead. I stay for one drink, get a burger from the Jack In the Box next door (they've closed the dining area, but agree to serve me at the drive-through window after I offer to hold an imaginary steering wheel and make car noises while I wait), then wander up to take a proper look at the Fremont Street Experience, the incredible covered street (the canopy is 90 feet high at its peak and covers four blocks) which incorporates many of downtown's biggest casinos.

Finally I catch the Deuce back down the Strip and a local bus which takes me close to the house, and fall into bed at around 6am, feeling I've made the most of the night.

Labels: arbuba hotel, Burning Man, first friday, las vegas, santa rampage

I crash in Deidre and Brian's hotel room, and wake feeling a little battered and ill but not too bad considering we did get round quite a few bars last night. Deidre and Brian are still asleep, so I slip out the door and take a fast bus to the guesthouse to pick up my gear and come back.

When I return Deidre is up and about and fairly chipper, but Brian looks to be on the brink of death and is staying in bed - his flight leaves in the early evening anyway. We split a huge room service sandwich and salad, commiserate with Brian then gear up for Decompression. In my case this process takes about fifteen minutes, in Deidre's case somewhere around two hours. To be fair I dress fairly simply in my kilt and t-shirt and a set of rings with little jingling bells which I picked up in Reno, while Deidre has a beautiful indonesian outfit, elaborate hair arrangement covered with little gems and clips and a multilayered makeup job with amazing inch-long stick-on lashes.

We finally make it out to the taxi and it's about a half-hour ride across town to the street which is being closed to host Decompression. We're looking for Burner-sign all the way, and finally we spot signs for "Decom Parking" shortly followed by a group of people in furs, glitter, masks and huge puffy boots, who can only be going to a Burning Man-related event.

The line to enter is still short when we arrive, and we join a crowd which to most people would be bizarre, to us is incredibly welcoming. We hug everyone in sight and compare dust experiences as we work our way to the entrance booth and pay a paltry $10.00 to get our tickets and hand-stamps, and then we're in. At the entrance we're passed by gothic stiltwalkers, hugged again by a guy dressed entirely in gold and targeted by wandering drummers. We're home.

Before moving on to see the rest of the event we meet up with Cody, who I last saw back during Exodus back on the playa - I was going to get chai at centre camp, she was in a car very slowly moving toward the exit and as is the way of things in Black Rock City we became friends in the space of about five minutes just through going in the same direction at the same time.

She's darkhaired and statuesque, with dark eyes that snap with lifeforce and like Deidre she's a first-timer but a natural Burner - she just rides the love and good energy here and shares it around. She's actually here with her mum, who's all set to do Burning Man next year on Cody's enthusiastic recommendation. They split off to explore the street for themselves while we head towards the nearest dance music from the Space Cowboys stage.

The day is, to put it simply, amazing. There is an entire street closed off for the purpose of Decompression, with around ten stages at intervals along its length playing all kinds of excellent music, and crowds are already gathering and dancing even at two in the afternoon. We work the length of the street, following the movement of the crowd, drawn into each group of dancers and spilled out again when we're tired, soaking up the atmosphere and riding the buzz.

There's plenty to see, too, apart from the extraordinary costumes and performances (all the poi and staff spinners, hula hoopers, acrobats and other performers are out in force, seeding every dance floor and moving through the spaces in between). The little park on one side of the street is full of sculpture which survived the playa, and between the stages are numerous interactive installations, many of which I missed the first time round and am overjoyed to have a second chance to see.

There are displays of photographs along the fences, numerous art cars (mostly rather battered from heavy use - and sometimes scorched), and several theme camps have re-assembled themselves, including the Liquid Latex Lounge (who will cover any body part you select in latex), Camp Collage (who assemble images of BRC into extraordinary digital collages which conjure up very strange atmospheres), The Hydrogen Economy (who give participants the chance to burst rising bubbles of hydrogen gas with a blowtorch, creating goodsized fireballs) and many more.

We get to try the Unfortunate Monkey Experiment, a climb into a blackened replica space capsule in which an animatronic chimp sits by a series of displays - we have to answer questions and hit buttons in a pre-defined sequence in order to reactivate the capsule and launch it into space (with excellent light effects, a powerful vibration and launch views on the screens making a very effective feeling of liftoff). The queue is organised and motivated by an energetic geeky nutter in a spacesuit who offers us cups of orangeade (declaring in a dramatic voice "Would you like some Tang....IN SPACE?").

As the sun goes down we get to the serious business of dancing like maniacs - the Space Cowboys' DJs are consistently excellent but Opulent Temple and the Deep End have joined forces to create a great string of sets too. The crowd is a riot of LEDs, glowsticks, flames and luminous paint, a constantly moving, glowing tapestry of light, and the energy is incredible.

Once it gets a little later we move to Cafe Cocomo which will be open after the other stages close. We catch The Zoopy Show on the patio, a bizarre rock/electronica band with giant monster masks reminiscent of The Maxx, gothic/punk cheerleader dancing girls and a demented puppet sidekick, then move inside where Doctor Booty is wrapping up and about to be replaced by the extraordinary DMT Labs, a mixture of dance music, guerilla theatre and comedy performance art.

We go right through till after midnight, and stumble out of the street exhausted but utterly joyful in the early hours, ears ringing, to fall into a taxi. All this without a drink all day.

Labels: Burning Man, decompression, dmt labs, Hydrogen Economy, San Francisco, Space Cowboys

Waking up is a long slow process in the Black Rock International Burner Hostel. First up is Hagey, an early riser, who roams the house from 6am onwards with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, complaining about his aches and pains in a constant lowkey mumble. Over the next four or more hours various rumpled figures emerge from sofas, sleeping bags and beds, the coffeemaker begins to drain and fill and drain again, a low buzz of activity builds around the computers in the study and the table in the kitchen, a few people migrate to the deckchairs in the garden to slowly come to life in the morning sun.

As we are among the first up, I go out for a walk with James, to exercise his dog Chewie and Hagey's dog Limbo. James is a good-looking guy in his twenties or early thirties, with a thick blonde beard, small retangular glasses and a collection of pendants and dogtags which jingle constantly on his bare chest. A friend of his has recently purchased a huge area of land not far from the playa, and they're making plans and taking investment to build a self-contained community there, a centre for environmental education and green technologies.

James explains the plan as we do circuits of the local park and playground, the dogs pulling ahead on their leashes. He's got a slow philosophical way of speaking, often pausing to think of the right word, and his thinking is equally careful and precise. He's worked a lot of different jobs and travelled all over, and he has a very definite philosophy of what is a worthwhile way to use one's time. Like me right now, he's learning to be in the moment, to appreciate the here and now without worrying about the future or being self-conscious and afraid of others' reactions.

When we return to the house we find most of the residents up and about, so I heat up the griddle and after some searching around the unfamiliar kitchen for implements I start work on a batch of scotch pancakes, scaling up my usual recipe to allow for about 15 people. While I feel nervous at first, this being my first time cooking for a large group (and the first time I've really cooked since leaving home), it proves surprisingly easy to scale up the batch size and once I've got the heat of the griddle adjusted I'm turning out pancakes at a steady rate and they're disappearing equally fast.

The household gathers round the table, loading pancakes with "Canadian Bacon" (cheap ham of which all Canadians deny ownership), maple syrup and honey, and with a steady production line going I have time to move back and forth, chat with my fellow Burners and get a couple of plates in myself. It's a thoroughly sociable way to start the day, and appreciation of the pancakes is universal.

I spend the day at the hostel this time, just chatting or working on the blog. Kiwi, Roy and Trent head out in the afternoon to make a trip north, partly to speak to the legendary temple builder David Best. New Burners have arrived - Ina from Canada who's been minding one of the last camps on the playa, and the first group of Department of Public Works staffers, finally exhausted from tearing down the city and cleaning the desert, who've come into town for some R&R.

DPW are a very different breed, and I don't get on with them quite as well as the other Burners. Male or female (and they're fairly evenly mixed), reckless macho determination, bravado and mayhem are their watchwords as opposed to most Burners' more peaceful brand of anarchy, and many of them tend to be very into guns and other weaponry. They do an extraordinary job building and tearing down the city, working in incredible isolation and the hardest conditions, but they're well aware of it and some are inclined to treat regular Burners with derision as tourists.

In the evening the DPW group book rooms at the Peppermill casino hotel for a night of luxury and partying, and invite everyone else in the hostel to join them. I stay, conscious of my early start in the morning to catch the bus (I still haven't received a rideshare offer and I'm assuming Greyhound will end up being mode of transport), and the house gradually empties around me. A few stay till after midnight to relax in the hot tub but eventually move on.

Since the others won't be back till tomorrow this is goodbye for most of the people I've gotten to know here. Gadget is the hardest to say goodbye to - we've been together through the hardest part of this process, and brough each other through the decompression to this oasis. Pickle and Lohr I feel like the best of friends with already, we've spent so much time joking and talking food together. It's amazing how fast you bond with people in this community - even Ina, who arrived only mid-morning, already feels like a close friend, and we say goodbye with regret. Jewel and I have spent hours talking together about my journey and hers, and where she goes from here - there are real tears when we separate.

Finally the house is empty except for myself, Hagey (who is finally getting a good night's sleep) and Georgia who has to be up for work in the morning. I'm quite pleased with the arrangement - I'm ready for a quiet evening in, the DPW's agressive partying style wouldn't suit me and it gives me a chance for a serious photo-uploading session. I get all my photos added to my Photobucket account, needing only to be hooked up to the pages themselves (should have them in place shortly).

Finally I hit the sack around 1am, later than planned but with time to at least get some rest before the bus. The house is quiet around me.

Labels: black rock international burner hostel, burners, Burning Man, Nevada, reno, scotch pancakes

The plan for today is to get to the motel, get our gear cleared out before checkout time, then Gadget will return to the hostel (he's decided to stick around a few more days) and I will get a bus out to a suitable hitch-hiking point and begin heading towards Houston. Frankly Hagey has recommended I come back to the hostel too and use the net to trawl for Burners or others heading that way and willing to provide a lift, but with three days to go I'm feeling really antsy to get moving and I'm afraid of how long it may take to get a lift. I need to be in Houston by Thursday in order to meet my fellow santas Tonya, Kelly and their friends, who are taking me to the Austin City Limits Music Festival at the weekend. With this in mind Hagey drops us to the transit centre early (he's an early riser and has been up for two hours) and we get the bus back to downtown.

We get all our gear packed and out of the motel room just in time as the manager comes knocking to tell us we should be checked out, hand in our keys and move on to Quiznos for breakfast/lunch, in my case a Peppercorn Beef sandwich on a soft toasty white bun, easily one of the best subs I've ever eaten. Once we have a moment I spread out a map of the state which Gadget has given me, and begin planning a hitching strategy, but it quickly becomes apparent that this is going to be a nightmare to hitch. Repeating a mistake I can't seem to stop making, I've drastically mis-estimated the journey time - it's going to take three days to get to Houston even with the best hitching I've had. The roads all go in the wrong directions and I'm going to be really stuck trying to avoid the freeways. In short, it's a pretty near impossible hitch.

Frustrated, I look at my options. Gadget recommends Amtrak, and although initially I balk at the price as I have before, I recall that I did reckon to take Amtrak at least once on my journey and this trip might be a good time to do it. The office is closed for lunch and we wait at the station for half an hour with me getting rather twitchy at the time being lost. When the staffer returns the news is bad - Amtrak from Reno to Houston would have to go via L.A. and would cost over three hundred dollars.

Next option: My old friend Greyhound. We walk out to the station to find that Greyhound to Houston is also very roundabout, will cost $177.00 and take almost two full days. Not appealing. Finally I admit that Hagey was right and I need to try rideshare first. We stop into the cafe and I place entries on Craigslist and the Burning Man forums requesting a rideshare to Houston or somewhere on the way. All there is to do now is wait and return to Hagey's, which is actually a real relief after this stress.

However, on the way out I go to take some cash out of the ATM, and get the response "Temporarily unable to complete transaction". Panic. I walk up the road to a corner shop and try a different machine - same result. We walk back to Virginia and I try a casino ATM on a different network. Same thing. I'm really scared now - could I have miscalculated so badly that I've drained my account already? I would have to be thousands of dollars out...

I walk up to Bank of America, thankfully a lot closer to downtown than banks usually seem to be in North America, and the teller, although unable to check my status with Visa, kindly lets me use their phone to call Barclays' Lost and Stolen Card line - I'm beginning to get an inkling that the same thing has happened as in Niagara Falls. I wait for a full half hour on hold for what should be an emergency service, and begin to suspect that something larger has gone wrong at Barclays, when the teller returns to tell me they can't have me on an international call any longer but if I come back tomorrow I can try again.

Still deeply worried, I walk with Gadget back down towards the transit centre, but remember that in Niagara my card would still work at point-of-sale - this would be a test of whether the same thing has happened again. I stop into a grocery store and buy a few bits, and to my enormous relief find that the card works. We return to the station with just enough cash between us to cover our ride back to Sparks, and James comes to pick us up and bring us home to the BRIBH.

Back at the hostel a shopping trip is being arranged for dinner ingredients - James does most of the cooking and is winding up for a big pasta, salad and stirfry project. I decide that if I'm going to be here another day or two I want to be able to pitch in with a contribution, so I decide to go along to get ingredients and make scotch pancakes for everyone in the morning. It's pretty daunting since I've never cooked for more than four people before but it's an exciting challenge too, and a chance to cook real food for the first time in a long while.

I go along with Lore and Pickle, two guys who've been packing up the city for several days and have just returned. They're fanatical about food too, and they, James and I have a great multiway discussion about the virtues of meat, fast and slow cooking, baking vs cooking and other fun topics. Fully equipped we return for an immensely enjoyable group cooking effort with at least six people at all times chopping vegetables, slinging things in and out of the oven, waving red-hot pans about and generally endangering each others' safety at every turn, accompanied by passionate discussions, mostly around food.

Labels: amtrak, black rock international burner hostel, Burning Man, greyhound, Nevada, reno

Finally Gadget and I decide we're going to make a Burner party happen for ourselves. Going to Electronic Espresso first we post a proposal on the Burning Man forums for a get-together in the evening, with some activities around the casinos - we have a plan for a Burner emotional support service for gamblers, spreading out across the gaming floors, enquiring after people's luck and providing sympathy and small gifts for those not doing so well.

While I'm posting, Santi comes online through Google Chat and I tell him about our plan. He recommends I contact Hagey at the Black Rock International Burner Hostel. It's a hostel slash theme camp - Hagey takes in dozens of international Burners every year, puts them up in his place and ships them out to the playa and back again for the Burning Man week itself. I email him right away and get a response before we leave the cafe - he says to come straight over and join them, they have plenty of food, space to sleep and a whole bunch of Burners still there, and they'd really like to see us.

Gratefully we hop a bus out to the Sparks transit centre on the east side of Reno, and call Hagey for a pickup. In ten minutes a huge truck still covered in caked playa dust rolls up to the corner and we're welcomed aboard with open arms. Hagey is in his late forties or early fifties, big, chunky and with a rough-and-ready attitude mixed with enormous affection and unconditional love for everyone he comes into contact with. He's accompanied by Jewel from Phoenix who's staying with the camp, a sweet lady with a slightly snub nose, red hair and an oddly embarassed-seeming smile who welcomes us as though we're her oldest friends and have been away too long. We're back in the bosom of the Burner community.

We return to the house itself, which is a combination hostel, commune and staging area for vast quantities of heavy equipment, caravans, trailers, amazing sculptures and other paraphernalia of a theme camp. It is full of Burners in a mellow party mood - Roy from Israel, Kiwi, Hagey's right hand man from New Zealand, Trent from Australia, Perky who lives locally, James who's currently between locations but originally from Ohio, and many others. They are universally happy to see us, and we are hugged, questioned and led immediately to the fridge and tables of food and drink left over from Exodus.

Inside the house is amazing, full of sculptures and paintings, musical instruments, carvings, bizarre clothes, overstuffed leather sofas and dogs. We lounge in the garden around the hostel's beautiful sculpted fire-barrel as the sun goes down, music playing in the background, in comfortable social drift. Some of the guys drag out two red and green laser displays and hook them up to one of the several computers inside the house to play off the music, projecting a constantly shifting pattern of light over the tentacled metal tree sculpture in the corner of the garden. We disappear at intervals into the shared kitchen for plates of gorgeous potato salad from a vast bowl in the fridge.

Quite soon we decide, at Hagey's insistence, that we'll stay the night and head back to the motel in the morning to get our gear cleared out before checkout time. The sun goes down and the garden's lit by the fire barrel, the lasers and a soft glow from the windows. We talk into the night and watch the fire, unwinding, feeling a real sense of decompression in the protective company of those who know what we're going through. Inside the computers are constantly busy, playing music and videos.

I spend much of the evening talking to Jewel, who is in many ways where I was at the start of the year. After 22 years as a wife and mother she's come out to see Burning Man, and after being let down by her travelling companion and left without money or facilities she has ended up here at the hostel under Hagey's kindly eye. Now her next step would be to gather some money, return to Phoenix and her two grown children (she's separated from their father)...but she doesn't want to go back. She wants to see the world, and her experiences and the people she's met in the last couple of weeks have given her a craving to have an adventure and expand her horizons.

Despite her fears and the shock of her new and unfamiliar environment she's facing up to the challenge of her situation with excitement and passion, and it's really inspiring to see someone taking those first steps, and in a far more challenging situation than my own - she has no savings or equipment and she's getting ready to strike out and just take what comes. It amazes and inspires me, re-ignites my own enthusiasm for the road, for the life of taking what comes next, considering how much easier I have it by comparison.

The gathering continues till early morning. As the night wears on we drift away one by one to crash out on sofas and armchairs or pads on the floor until the house is quiet and every surface is covered in snoring Burners.

Labels: black rock international burner hostel, Burning Man, decompression, hagey, Nevada, reno, sparks

Sorry for the brief break in updates, folks - the last couple of weeks have been pretty messy. Getting back on top of things now, updates should be as usual from here on in.

I wake well-rested, but all of my good mood is gone. It seems that the end of Burning Man has finally come home to me and I feel completely alone, a feeling of desperation and loss I just can't shake. I put in a few hours on the blog which raises my spirits a little, but being reminded of what was only makes me feel more lost afterwards. I go back to the motel, sort through my equipment and try to make some plans and get in a positive mood but I can't seem to recapture that feeling of joyful freedom and play, or even shake the dark cloud that hangs over everything. Everyone I speak to seems either hostile, desparate or doped.

Eventually I walk down by the river, which runs through a really beautiful stretch of parkland laced with little bridges, and walking for ten minutes I see a familiar twirling movement on the other side; someone is spinning poi with a little crowd sitting and watching. Burner crowd for sure. My spirits leaping, I cross the bridge and join them. Actually I'm only half right - most of the group, including the poi spinner, are local kids, although they're all wannabe Burners planning to go next year. However, on the end is Chris, aka Gadget, who is wearing a plaid skirt, still covered in playa dust and has an extravagently fur-covered bike.

I sit down next to him. "Burner?" "Burner!" "Just go back?" "Yeah, like two hours ago. You?" "Monday, late" "How's it going?" "Ah...not so good, mate. It's all over, you know? I just feel really alone, and nobody's hugged me today..." then he just hugs me. We talk and compare notes - it turns out he's been left in the lurch by some campmates who left early with his luggage, ID and money. He has nothing except what he's wearing and carrying, most of which has been gifted to him. He's going to be living on the streets until he can figure some way to get money or get in touch with his friends or family back home in California.

I offer the use of my shower, and we leave the group to walk up to my motel. On the way it occurs to me that I'm in a paid-up two-bed room, and I invite Gadget to share with me until other options come up. It turns out to be a pretty good match-up, and we both find that missing Burn energy and a way out of our doldrums as we compare notes and build off each other's energy and enthusiasm. We have similar interests and obsessions, particularly technology, and we were both Burning Man virgins this year - Gadget was literally dragged out of bed by a friend back in San Francisco knowing nothing about BM and given an extra ticket.

There's a rumour that other Burners will be coming to the square by the river in the evening, maybe with some firespinners, so we get done up in full playa gear, load up on giftable items and head back down there, but it's deserted except for a few skaters. We wait around for a while, but no-one shows up. On asking around we hear that Burners tend to hang out at the Zephyr on south Virginia, but after a long walk we find the bar almost empty. We have a couple of drinks (I'm still on the orange juice) and the staff tell us that the other major Burner hangout is the Hideout off 4th. We get a ride with someone going that way, but find the Hideout also mostly deserted.

The general opinion is that most Burners are still recovering and won't be out tonight, so we dig in at the Hideout, which has a great jukebox and a couple of pool tables at which we enjoy a pleasantly incompetent game. Frankly it's nice just to sit and chat. Unfortunately all the time sitting with drinks going past me on all sides erodes my resolve, and I have just one bottle of Guinness, which turns into another bottle, then a whiskey, and by midnight we're drinking Irish Car Bombs with Katie the bartender. When Katie finally closes up due to lack of business she takes us on with her to a great little brew pub from which we stagger home in the early hours.

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Labels: Burning Man, decompression, depression, gadget, Nevada, reno

I sleep long and deep, and wake up with that familiar desert drymouth to jump into another joyful shower (greatest invention of the 20th century, I swear!) before planning my day. First priority: Laundry. I take two loads down the laundry room and in the process meet Paul, a longterm resident here at the Sundance Motel and sort-of parttime handyman.

Paul's a gangling, moustachioed figure in leather jeans and waistcoat, with a tight little braid coming down from under his baseball cap and unbelievably manic energy - he jumps from foot to foot, waves his arms and spins on the spot as he talks. Right now he's cleaning out the corners of the laundry looking for drug paraphernalia and empty bottles left by residents, diving down by each machine, lifting it one-handed to scrape out great clumps of lint and rubbish with his other arm then dropping it to move on to the next. He's already found a crack pipe and two plastic vodka bottles.

Paul's been out to Burning Man two or three times in the past, but he's an original oldtime hippy and derogatory of the new generation of flower children. He is, however, impressed with the huge amounts of drugs and alcohol they're dumping in the motel dumpsters as they rush to unload weight for their return drive home. He tells me about his time on the road with the original love generation, the shock of the original change, kids becoming independent for the first time. In his view the Burner crowd are trying to recapture something they can't understand.

Laundry done I head out to get some work done on the blog. First stop is of course Dreamers for a cup of their incredible chai and a couple of prepaid hour vouchers for their internet machines, but I soon find that I can't access the tools I need and I content myself with answering my mail and ordering some business cards, essential due to the number of people I've been giving my site address out to. Then it's back to good old Electronic Espresso on 2nd.

Typing up my journal from the week turns out to be a surprisingly powerful experience. Mostly updating the blog I find it vaguely interesting to revisit events, but mostly I'm just thinking about how to express myself, what needs changing and how long it's taking out of my day. This time I find myself re-exploring all kinds of states of mind and re-evaluating my experiences as from the outside. All kinds of strange emotional waves come up as I work through the events, positive and negative.

The cafe has an acoustic compilation CD playing in the background, fairly standard coffeeshop music, but about halfway through my session I recognise a tune, and a cover of Redemption Song comes on. I'm instantly transported back to that moment, sitting watching the Temple burn, and I'm completely overcome with tears. I have to disappear into the bathroom until I can get myself back under control.

As I'm getting ready to move out I remember my decision of the previous day and I look up and note down a couple of local yoga centres with beginner classes.

Next lunch. I still haven't tried a real burrito, so I walk down Virginia to Kokopelli's Grill, a really good Mexican restaurant with very economical prices, and have a steak burrito. It's a huge tortilla package, so big I can hardly take a bite out of it, stuffed with juicy steak, black beans and guacamole, and served with a side of crispy tortilla chips.

The afternoon is taken up with a long shopping trip down to the retail ghetto, and by the time I get back to the motel it's almost time to look for the yoga place. I actually get horrendously lost in a relatively small area of town, and I'm still wandering and cursing when the time of the class passes. By bizarre and serendipitous coincidence, however, I happen on another centre - the Yoga Shack - where they have a Candlelight Yoga class starting in fifteen minutes and suitable for beginners.

Inside, the building is built around winding little wood-floored corridors, fronting on a small shop where the attendees of the class are gathering. I meet Jackie who is taking the class, and leave my gear in the locker room way back in the building. The interior of the centre is beautifully decorated in strong simple colours, with patterns of plants and flowers, little siderooms with glowing lamps and ornaments, quirky decorations and tapestries. In short, it's very Burning Man. Serendipity continues.

Six of us lay down our mats in the lovely wood-floored practice room, which is surrounded by candles in glass jars, and Jackie turns on a CD of gentle indian music and begins the class. She talks constantly in a soft murmur, an almost hypnotic series of instructions and calm repetitions as she pads around the room, occasionally stepping in to correct a posture or demonstrate a difficult position.

The breathing and mental work are relatively familiar from martial arts and meditation practices I've done before, but the positions are mostly agonising. I'm expecting something relatively effortless, more about grace than muscle work, but holding the positions with my weight suspended on unfamiliar and under-developed muscles is a seriously strenuous workout and I'm soon burning all over, but feeling tremendously energised too. It's a strange mixture of flowing graceful movement, meditative thinking and strenuous workout, which leaves the mind so overloaded with multiple foci it just goes to another place, and the body glowing with endorphins.

We wind down as the last of the sunlight fades from the windows, moving into lower and more relaxed positions until we reach savasana, lying flat on the back with palms up, eyes closed, breathing evenly, totally at rest. Jackie turns off the CD and we stay there for maybe fifteen minutes in total silence. Then she sings.

Practice done, I roll up my mate and return to the locker room, blown away by the whole experience, feeling energised and totally loose. I spend a little time chatting to Jackie and to Geoff, who was also participating in the class. He got out to the playa himself but was sick the day of the temple burn, and we swap stories of our own experiences there in the softly lit shop until it's time to lock up and leave.

On the way home it's past nine and I'm starving hungry - and what better way to assuage one's hunger than to sample the Nugget Casino's world-renowned Awful-Awful Burger? (Because it's awful big...and awful good!) I order in the narrow, crazily busy diner, crammed into one long low room at the back of the tiny fifty-year-old casino, and in about ten minutes I'm presented with a basket containing a huge half-pound burger and a full pound of crispy fries.

The burger is actually pretty good, thick tasty beef if quite overcooked, with thick slices of onion and tomato on a savoury "onion bun", but when I come to the fries I'm already feeling half-full and the sheer amount of them is daunting and makes me feel quite gross, especially in contrast to the world of soft light and purity I've just come from.

I munch listlessly on a few chips, and then I notice something unusual opposite. A girl in heavily ripped jeans and a bandanna has opened one of the bin cupboards and is rummaging through the contents. At first I think maybe it's a member of staff, at the end of her shift and already changed to go home, until she comes up with a fold of paper containing a pile of discarded fries. Right inside the diner this is some particularly agressive dumpster diving.

Almost immediately the girl is accosted by a male member of diner staff and starts a heartfelt argument pointing out what a waste it is that so many fries get made and just thrown away. The bartender joins the argument and after some debate says she'll talk to the kitchen staff about getting some food for the girl and her friends who are outside, as long as she leaves the bins alone - the manager is threatening to call the police.

The girl's smile of relief and gratitude is angelic. She sits at a table with her packet of fries and is joined by a friend from outside. I give her a thumbs-up from across the diner, then on second thoughts go across to introduce myself and congratulate her on a job well done and on her good fortune.

The girl in the bandanna is Aylie, originally from Vegas but she's been on the streets travelling for many months. She has dirty blond hair under her green bandanna, a ring through her septum and the round, innocent face of a twelve-year-old, although she seems to be closer to 16. Her friend Lauren has long dark hair and a small nose stud, and more of a cynical cast. She's homeless too but comes from Reno originally.

I join them and with some relief offer my fries for sharing. We munch and talk a little bit, and I learn that the girls are here with quite a large group who are waiting across the road, and they haven't been in Reno long. They've walked a long way today and are preparing to find a park to settle in for the night - tomorrow they're all going swimming in the river.

We're joined by Doug, a tall boy with dark dreadlocks hanging over his eyes, who receives the story of the generous staff with a soft "whoa". Shortly the kitchen staffer returns with two large paper sacks full of packets of fries and boxes of biscuits in gravy, and the bartender with three big containers of icewater. They both bring best wishes and good luck from all the staff.

I help carry the bounty outside where the rest of the group - almost twenty guys and girls between the ages of 16 and 22 - are stood under a hanging basket catching refreshing drips. They are almost all in ripped and modified camouflage gear, with shaved heads and undercuts, piercings and tattoos well-represented. I'm introduced to M.D., a chunky, motherly girl with a tough line to her jaw who seems to keep the rest together as a group, Jason, a skinny lad of around 18 with a mohawk above hairline punk and anarchist tattoos and an open, engaging face, and several of the others.

Jason is from Reno himself and we talk about the city as the chips and biscuits are distributed and ravenously devoured. I offer the suggestion that they look during the day in motel dumpsters, for the huge quantities of good equipment and food being dumped by departing Burners. Finally I say goodbye and return to my motel for sleep.

Labels: awful awful burger, Burning Man, dumpster diving, gold nugget, homeless, Nevada, reno, yoga

Rested and full of energy, Deidre and I prepare to hit the town. The only major objective for the day is getting Deidre's SUV washed for its return to the rental company. I suggest we start out at the Melting Pot, a wonderful Burner-run shop on South Virginia with an amazing selection of clothes, cushions, incense, handcrafted items from all over the world, novelty bits and pieces and every possible variety of playawear.

We pause before leaving for Deidre to load her hair with purple and pink ribbons - she wants to stay looking like a Burner, and she really seems to carry the spirit of the playa with her, the sense of childlike joy, play and self-expression. Her enthusiasm is infectious, and I feel that wild spirit too, making me think about the place we've come from and how it changes you. In some ways I'm only just beginning to feel how it's made me a different person.

We spend a happy hour at the Melting Pot browsing and chatting with the staff, and Deidre acquires a pair of bugeyed sunglasses and a coin-hung bellydancing skirt which jingles whenever she moves, with which she's deliriously happy. Hungry, we ask the staff about good restaurants locally and they point us straight across the street to Thai Chili. It's a little blocky building but inside the walls are hung with beautiful carvings and artwork, and the air is full of the scent of spice and sweet sauces.

One of three tiny Thai waitresses in beautiful printed skirts shows us to our table and serves us bowls of savoury mixed-mushroom and tofu soup, aromatic and rich. For the main course I have the Ruby Pumpkin, a bowl of creamy red curry sauce filled with huge prawns, lumps of tender chicken, crispy vegetables and chunks of yellow and green pumpkin. It comes with a pile of sticky steamed rice to dunk. On the side I have a fresh salad with shredded greens and chunks of tomato, covered in tangy peanut sauce.

Deidre has an amazing platter of mushrooms, grilled beef, baby sweetcorn and thick sheet noodles, and we swap to try everything. It's the best Thai food I've every eaten and a hot contender for one of the top twenty meals of my life.

We stagger forth and go searching for a full service carwash to take ten layers of dust off Deidre's Buick, but find only an automatic one so we spend about an hour scraping dust off all the interior surfaces with Armorall sponges. Satisfied with our fairly half-arsed job we go looking for coffee and spot a cafe called Dreamers right on the river.

We park by the courthouse, which is surrounded by beautiful green lawn and flowerbeds, and on the grass we find a little coterie of Burners, two guys and two girls, exuding playa dust and goodwill and practicing yoga, stretching like multi-coloured cats in the sunshine. They ask us to join them in a group snuggle, and I'm suddenly brought face-to-face with all my remaining self-consciousness welling up, my fear of being committed, part of the group, most of all my fear of imposing on somebody else.

My experiences of the previous week - the togetherness, the welcome I received everywhere, the joy of being unafraid - all come together in one moment, and I see the wall that kept me standing outside all those tents, the ingrained geek-kid fear that I won't be welcome, that I'll be in the way, tolerated at best. I see the wall - and I jump over it. I join the group and we snuggle on the grass in a comfortable line in the middle of Reno, attracting any number of very odd looks from passing tourists and cowboys. "We'll have the whole of Reno snuggling here by the end of the day!" says the dreadlocked guy on the end with joyful determination.

The other four are from Maine and and bracing themselves for the long, long drive back home - they're the first New Englanders that I've run into around Burning Man but they're pure Burners - their first question about our week is a very matter-of-fact "So, did you meet many cuddly people?"

Finally the need for coffee overwhelms us and we say goodbye and move on to Dreamers, which turns out to be a dream in itself. High-ceilinged and pillared, with huge windows looking out across the river, paintings everywhere, a set of shelves full of Nation Geographic and paperbacks and an amazing range of drinks. And they have chai.

The chai is amazing stuff, unbeatable in my limited experience, almost fruity under the rich cinammon and nutmeg, creamy and perfumed. The deep sills of the windows here are padded and loaded with cushions, and we drop our sandals and curl up there for some time, moving only to sample the delights of the cafe's massage chair which delivers a surprisingly agressive pummelling and leaves us both wonderfully relaxed.

I'm still digesting that leap over the fence, that discovery of a place where there is no self-consciousness, only the desire to share a moment with others, to feel love and connection. I find myself totally in the moment, not worrying about the next thing to do or consequences or the past but taking absolute joy in the sunshine, soft cushions, delicious chai, great music, the view, the company of a new friend.

Eventually as the sun sinks lower we return to the grass for Deidre to try out cartwheels in her jingling skirt and we chat with the Maine crowd until they have to leave. An idea has been planted in my mind - I've met a whole bunch of people this week who do yoga and get an enormous amount of satisfaction from it and I've grown really interested. It's a discipline which I must admit for a long time I've lumped in with rather fluffy lifestyles, but now...fluffy seems pretty appealing.

Deidre practices yoga, and happily teaches me a few basic positions. It's fun and refreshing, and I resolve to look for a yoga class while I'm in Reno. By now we're pretty hungry again, so we go just next door to Dreamers, to the Wild River Grille. Again the food is amazing. We split an appetiser of shrimp with mango sauce, massive flavoursome beasts in a perfect crispy crumb, the sauce tangy and zesty.

Then it's a New York strip sirloin each, the long-awaited fulfillment of our desire to eat something that bleeds. I order mine rare and it is exquisite, tender and juicy, with a hint of red in the juices and the outside still brown enough to carry real flavour onto the tongue. It's piled with portobello and shiitake mushrooms and a knob of garlic butter, and served with crunchy steamed broccoli (with a hint of lemon pepper and white wine) and garlicky creamy mashed potatoes.

We wash it all down with Petite Sirah, and I'm once again reminded that despite my instinctive railing against the snobbery of wine culture there really is a difference between a good bottle of wine and my usual two pound ninety-nine Liebfraumilch. This is a multilayered experience even to my rudimentary palate, at first sweet with an almost spicy, exotic edge, then rich and warm with a little bit of smokiness, and finally surprisingly dry on the way down.

Deidre, it should be noted, pays for everything, as she has insisted on doing all day. I stopped protesting when she threatened to fight me for the bill. By the time we're finished it's time for her to leave for the airport. She still has a polystyrene cooler and six plastic bottles of drinking water in the back of the SUV, which she doesn't have time to dump. They're too much for me to carry so to make them crushable we use them to water the flowerbeds of the Courthouse, running back and forth over the grass through pools of light from the spotlights with a certain amount of giggling and expecting to be arrested at any moment. It seems an appropriate act for the week.

We part at last with promises to write, and I drift back into Dreamers for a last cuppa, to laze on the windowsill and write my journal. It feels as though today has been the real realisation, the real learning moment of the whole week, for which the whole of Burning Man has only been setting me up. And Deidre, in her bugeyed shades and musically jingling skirt, brought just enough of the Burn back with us for me to finish the process. Thanks Deidre. Now the challenge is to keep it and live it.

Labels: Burning Man, chai, dreamers, Mashed potato, Nevada, reno, Strip steak, wild river grill

My initial plan is to get in my couple of hours of community cleanup first thing, then walk at least partway out of the playa before it gets too hot (I'll be moving at many times the speed of the queue) and start showing a Reno sign once it gets to real afternoon heat. With this in mind I wake relatively early and head straight down to Centre Camp to sign up at either the V-Spot (the volunteer centre) or Earth Guardians, but find both of them already packed up. Instead I get a spare bag and moop the vacant lot opposite my camp, finding quite a harvest of plastic shreds, wood, cloth and nylon bits.



Another dust storm is rising, creating waves of opacity but not a full white-out - dust storms get more severe here as the city is dismantled and stops providing a partial windbreak, and the long queues of cars kick up a lot of dust even though they're barely moving, breaking up the surface.

By the time I'm done mooping the sun is already blazing and I can't see walking out with all my kit, so instead I return to Centre Camp (still with a sizeable clientele lounging on benches or clustering in little groups around the central floor) for more chai, to read and write until the sun gets lower again. The dust storms continue to rise and we get a few minutes of full white-out, a little dust drifting into the tent itself to settle on the skin and grit on the teeth.

At 2:00 I go back to my tent to get some lunch (I haven't eaten yet) with the intention of starting to pack up about half past three - the heat usually subsides from four onwards. But when I get there the queue of vehicles seems to have disappeared - there are isolated cars and RVs rolling out from 10:00 but no sign of the long silver tail. I can hardly believe it - it seems the Exodus has cleared out completely already.

Of course, had I thought about it further (and had a bit more sleep or not been baking my brain in the sun) I would have realised it was impossible for thousands of vehicles to make it out on a single road in that time, and there are plenty of Burners still to leave. But I'm seized with fear that I'm losing my opportunity for a ride and start packing up in a panic, getting everything together a little after three and humping my gear out to the 10:00 junction with the intention of just getting the first ride I can.

Once there and faced with what is still a pretty good stream of vehicles I relax a little, make myself a Reno sign and start begging. The dust-storm is rising again and I keep my goggles on mostly as the oncoming vehicles and surrounding desert appear and vanish in the clouds of white. I'm there about 15 minutes, getting loads of apologies, thumbs-ups and good wishes from people with already-overloaded vehicles, before Deidre pulls over and calls "I'm going to Reno!" I gather up my gear with relief and clamber in.

Deidre is dark-haired, roundfaced and a bit playa-ruffled, with endless bubbly energy and unstoppable chattiness - she's still bouncing in her seat with happiness over the joys of Burning Man. She works for a solar energy company in Vegas, but in her limited spare time she makes beautiful trancey electronica with her boyfriend - she sings and he assembles the tracks. She plays me a track off her iPod and it's stunning, her vocals high and clear and cold over rhythmic undercurrents of percussion.

We're in Deidre's huge dust-covered Buick SUV, given to her by a lucky break at the rental company when they didn't have the compact she'd booked, and the first things that hits me is the delicious blast of cold air from the A/C vents - to feel cold air again is incredible. We roll on into the dust-storm, and rapidly begin to hit points of common interest and passion - music, politics and philosophy, film and books. Within half an hour we are talking like old friends.

This is fortunate because about twenty minutes later we hit the back end of the Exodus. It hasn't moved far - traffic at the city exit may be moving smoothly but a few miles out on the road is the back end of an extensive tailback. The last estimate from BMIR was a four hour wait, which turns out to be optimistic. We spend well over five hours in an almost continuous dust-storm, moving forward two or three car-lengths every five to ten minutes, in company with five other lanes of cars and trailers.

Every now and then we are passed by other Burners on foot, asking for rides or just looking for news. Mostly all we see is the nearest vehicles, the whiteout is almost continuous now. At other times the storm lifts and we can see the startling expanse of white desert, mountains and pure blue sky on all sides before the curtain drops again. Incredibly, even out here in the wasteland miles from the city, we see occasional lone volunteers out mooping the playa. The process of Leaving No Trace never stops. Here and there are art cars parked the other side of the ropes.

We talk and watch and listen to music, our energy gradually flagging as night falls over the dust and the cars. Finally we reach a point where the lanes merge into four, then three, two and finally one, and now we're moving with relative frequency. Even out here there are volunteers in playa gear, in the dark and the dust, directing traffic, keeping each others energy up with games and shouted messages over the wind.

At last we turn out onto the main road, passing another stopped art car on the corner, and we're rolling freely. Still we're surrounded by Burners, ahead and behind us. The local native communities are on full Burn accomodation now, and every few miles we pass a layby with an Airstream trailer and signs advertising Indian Tacos, and long lines of extravagently-dressed figures outlined against the spotlights.

By now my three hours of sleep have caught up with me, and I'm back in Greyhound Space, half-hypnotised by the lights flickering by, dozing and waking, drifting in and out as we roll through the darkness. We stop at an allnight store for gas and munchies, loading up on crisps and amazing beef jerky. Deidre's been eating vegan for a week and I've been on the fish and rice diet, so we both experience rapture over the red meat, alternating comments like "Mmmm...the flesh of dead animals!" and "I can almost taste the BLOOD!"

It is past midnight when we round a curve and Reno is spread out below us in all its glowing, tacky glory. It looks pretty welcoming. We roam the retail ghetto for a while to find a Wendys and buy huge multilayered burgers (it's an ecstatic experience, but the cheap fast food hits my empty stomach like a bomb and I feel bloated and queasy for an hour), then roll into downtown.

I'm looking to get a motel room for another week to rest and recover before heading east, while Deidre is flying out the following night back to Vegas, and just wants to spend the following day exploring Reno, particularly the university district where she hopes to find some interesting little cafes and shops. She's planning to sleep in the RV, but when we find a good motel it turns out there's only a $20.00 difference between a 1-bed and 2-bed room, so we decide to share for the night.

The room is large, reasonably clean, air-conditioned, has a great little kitchen and the beds are soft. Deidre's out like a light, I manage to last just long enough for a blissful shower with terrifying amounts of dust coming off in layers, then I hit the sack. Sleep is long and deep and peaceful.

Labels: Black Rock City, Burning Man, Dust storm, exodus, moop, Nevada, reno, Reno Nevada

It's the last day of Burning Man, and looking back over it I've had some extraordinary experiences, met some great people, seen some amazing things, but I have some regrets. I'm hungover again and it strikes me that if I hadn't drunk so much through the week I could probably have gotten a lot more done, made it to more workshops and seminars. I've never dealt well with situations where stuff is available for free in unlimited quantity, particularly food and drink, and I feel I've really overindulged myself this week. I resolve that I'm going to quit the heavy drinking for a while, maybe for good, and most of all have a sober final night.

In a way it's all part of my process of becoming more confident and relaxed, particularly in social situations - I tend to be afraid that I'm going to be tense and uncomfortable without a drink, particularly that I won't be able to dance because I'll be too self-conscious. I've proved it wrong in the past but it's a lesson that takes time to sink in. I decide that tonight will be an opportunity to practice the principle.

Actually the other major limiting factor in the week has been my residual cough, which just hasn't cleared up (the playa dust is probably largely responsible). It's such a petty thing but when you're consistently coughing about every tenth word of a conversation it makes you very self-conscious of making contact with people. It's also made me shy away from a bunch of activities I would have wanted to try - the stuff involving silent meditation, chanting and singing. Can't be helped.

In the interests of finding a non-partying activity I decide to go to the Forbidden Technologies presentation at the camp of the same name, which promises to unlock the secrets of free energy. Walking there I find Black Rock City slowly taking itself apart. Maybe half of the population here leave after the burning of the Man in order to try and get away in good time or to get back for work in the week, and many only came out for Friday and Saturday (the weekenders tend to be regarded with a bit of derision by some veteran Burners - particularly the fact that they're not here long enough to get covered in dust).

Today is the real beginning of Exodus, the process of getting everybody back out of the city and off the playa. The queue is already building, a long line of vehicles snaking out from 10:00 to the horizon and stretching back along a good part of the outer ring road, creeping forward a few feet at a time. Thousands of people will leave today, more tomorrow, the peak of the Exodus. Black Rock Information Radio tries to keep everyone up to date, tracks the length of the queue and advises leaving late or early, or after Monday.

Already there are dusty spaces everywhere where RVs once stood, and where streets were clear cuts between tightly packed camps they have become wide meandering spaces. Of those still here, many are packing up - stacking girders which once formed arching domes and shade structures, rolling up banners and tapestries and rugs, packing away giant inflatable penises and loading palm trees into lorries.

It's a slightly melancholy scene and I feel the same way. On many of the faces I pass is that anticipation of home, of arriving back at a place where life is easy, where everything is familiar, where one's favourite things are always to hand. I have a little further to go.

I'm soon distracted from my gloomy mood when I arrive at the Forbidden Technologies dome (unmarked, for reasons which will soon become apparent) and meet Turbo, a deeply tanned longhaired California surfer dude who is approaching 60 and claims to have built a cold fusion power system in his basement which allows him to run his entire house in perpetuity on two car batteries.

It's only myself and three others in the seminar and it's too bright for Turbo to run his video, so we just sit and talk, and over more than three hours our host takes us step-by-step through the process of building a Cold Fusion generator which will provide infinite free power. He lounges at ease, dyed blond hair draped over the back of his deckchair, over a dozen ivory and amber ornaments draped over his bare chest, and goes through the development of free energy from Nikolai Tesla onwards at a relaxed pace.

The instructions certainly sound plausible, and seem technically complete (apart from a little vagueness around voltage thousands and millions). Of course, Turbo claims that the only reason we don't all have this technology is because of the massive conspiracy set in place by seven families (possibly of alien origin) who have been running the world for thousands of years and don't want ordinary people to have easy lives.

Normally Turbo doesn't even register in the events guide for fear of drawing attention - this year he registered, and had three mechanical breakdowns on the way to Burning Man. He doesn't feel this is a coincidence. He claims the cold fusion process disrupts weather patterns in the area, which could allow hostile forces to zero in on him - one of the reasons he doesn't bring a demonstration device with him.

He's a fascinating storyteller and a compelling speaker, with a wealth of detail and strange background coincidence to support his narrative, and the hours fly by. Once we're done with free energy we move onto the rest of Turbo's conspiracy theories, the secret families, the way the government controls one's corporate identity (and the process of avoiding it) and many other topics.

On the way home I pass the Playa Surfers camp, where they are packing up most of their gear in order to make a fast getaway in the morning. Pleased to be able to make a contribution (and to have some company, still feeling a bit down) I help them moop the area as they pack. Moop (Matter Out Of Place) is the biggest buzzword of Burning Man. To maintain our Leave No Trace profile, every single thing we bring in must be taken back out again.

Anything left on the playa, particularly anything non-biodegradable (although even organic matter doesn't tend to rot out here due to zero humidity) is a no-no, down to the smallest sequin, grain of rice or feather. Consequently mooping is a vital part of packing up your camp, and every citizen is requested to put in a couple of hours during the week mooping shared areas to minimise the cleanup after BRC is dismantled - the Department of Public Works will do the final sweeps when the playa is bare once again.

Mooping as a group is actually quite sociable and not too strenuous once you're into your rhythm, and the Surfers are a nice crowd. I return to my camp for yet another meal of rice and sardines (okay, now I'm sick of them), then roll back out to the playa. A fair portion of the remaining artwork is already burned or dismantled but there's still a lot to see and Esplanade is still bustling despite the reduced population. Somewhere out on the open playa someone with a fire is creating incredible, perfect rings of black smoke which drift to amazing height in the dead still air.



Finally it is getting dark, and I walk out to the Temple, just visible far off on the horizon in the light of it's solar-charged spotlights. The crowd is already thick, and I squeeze between a forest of bikes to sit cross-legged at the back. The atmosphere is subtly different here - there are still odd whoops, yells, music from the art cars, but the mood is less hyper and agressive, there is a feeling of togetherness and connection between those of us who have stayed which wasn't present at the burning of the Man.

We wait maybe ten minutes in the darkness, gazing up at the spotlit structure, before four torches flare into life in front of the temple. The art cars turn their music down, then off, and the crowd becomes quiet. This time, instead of thundering drums and parades, a single female voice comes over hidden speakers, raised in unaccompanied song.

The voice sounds almost operatic, so high and clear, incongruous in this rough-and-ready crowd. Then it reaches the chorus and I recognise it - she's singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It's perfect and beautiful, and raises a lump in my throat as the torchbearers move to their places at the corners of the temple. The crowd are totally silent now, only the singer. Even the city has fallen silent, no distant music drifting over the night, the first time I've experienced Black Rock City without some noise.

The song ends and the singer begins Bob Marley's Redemption Song, soft and heartfelt, with a gentle acoustic guitar accompaniment, as the torches dip and flames begin to lick at the edges of the Temple. The song ends, and there is nothing but perfect silence as the flames wrap around the structure. It's stunning, and myself and many others are in tears now, joy and sadness inseparable. The heart of the crowd is wide open out here in the dark, there's nothing but love and connection between us.

When the structure finally falls there is almost no yelling, no cheering - just one resounding, almost regretful "Oh" from a thousand throats. Then there is silence again. After maybe five more minutes something changes, and the tension finally breaks as a massed whoop rises on one side of the ring and travels around towards us. It breaks over us, an irresistable wave of noise and energy, and we punch the air and yell like maniacs. The wave circles the crowd five times as the temple slowly collapses into a pile of glowing embers, and then there is another of those undefinable changes and the crowd begins to disperse.

I feel cored out, battered by such strong emotion, exalted and at peace but a little empty, walking back to the City. I really can't decide what I want now, so I go to Centre Camp, which I've only really passed by so far. It's one vast circular tent with a ring of huge flags on the roof and an open centre over a dancefloor with a beautiful spiral design painted on it.

On one side is the long cafe counter, the only place (apart from the Arctica ice stations) in Black Rock City where one can spend money (the sheer amount of beverages turned out by this place would be impossible to cover from Burning Man funds otherwise). The rest of the tent is full of painted benches and sofas in clusters, with two stages on opposite sides (the tent is big enough that a performance can go on on each without interfering with each other), and random art installations scattered all over.

The tent is quiet right now under its soft lights, but already people are filtering in from the darkness outside, draping themselves over benches and sofas, lining up for drinks. I have my first ever cup of chai, the delicious sweet spiced tea frothy with milk - it's exactly what I need, comforting and warming - and finally fill out my citizen's census form (characteristic of this community, it has something like twelve questions about fire - "Do you like it when things are on fire?", "Do you like watching other people set things on fire?" "Do you prefer to set things on fire yourself?").

Back out into the night and I'm looking for music and dancing. With excellent timing I find the Purple Lounge readying for its last journey - it's a concertina-joined double length bus with has been refitted as a club and lounge, filled with coloured lights and fluffy purple sofas and with the outside built up as a galleon with multiple decks capable of holding probably 100 celebrants. I go upstairs and stand at the mid-deck rail as we move off, cruising between the firepits and the remaining lights of the city, music pounding.

I get into conversation with the man standing next to me, and we're looking over his photos when we both recognise each other - It's Ron from Oregon, and I met him in the washrooms at Mount Rainier campsite the morning we were washed out, as I was packing up ready to leave. Life and Burning Man are strange. At 9:00 plaza the bus unloads for the last time. Ron has to go back to his camp to fetch some things but we promise to keep in touch having come back together under such strange circumstances.

I walk a little ways counter-clockwise and find DustD, a small club on a corner, mostly just a DJ booth and a dance platform, but now expanded by a substantial crowd of revellers turning good-sized area of playa into a dance floor, and a glowing art car parked opposite providing bar services and a seating area. At first I'm self-conscious without a drink in me, feeling awkward and self-aware, but I quickly loosen up and have a great time, dancing for hours and crashing out in the art car to rest and talk when my energy dips. In Black Rock City you're never far from firespinners, and at intervals the dance floor clears back for amazing displays of staff and poi work.

I move on again for a last visit to the Flying Monkey where soul and funk are playing and the whole crew are present in the midst of a heaving crowd. I dance again here for about an hour, then move on again feeling fulfilled and connected, at peace, plugged in. I end up back in Centre Camp again until 3am, updating my journal and sipping more chai as the night crowd drifts in and out. Some play instruments or sing gently, others juggle, spin poi or staffs or hoops or just dance.

Labels: Black Rock City, Burning Man, centre camp, chai, Nevada, temple burn

Hi folks - somehow managed to mess up the photos in the previous post, as some of you may have noticed. They're now fixed.

Another lazy morning, and I spend the heat of the early afternoon in the Cosmic Elves Inner City Commune. Their usual iced chai is off today but their beautiful dome, decorated with coloured drapes, is cool and full of cushions and it feels good just to lie there and think and look up at the deep blue sky through the roof opening overhead.

Next I get a proper look at the Barbie Death Camp and Wine Bistro, a longterm camp, growing every year, featuring hundreds of Barbies being marched into two battered ovens and surrounded by their tortured, chained and mutilated sisters. I enjoy a cold drink with the camp's creators, Doc Pyro and his missus Felony Arson, and hear about the display's growth from a handful of donated Barbies to the current extravagant layout.



Home for dinner and it's time for my pre-Burn evening - tonight they burn the Man itself, the towering effigy which forms the centre-point of the playa layout. I'm actually feeling pretty emotional as we approach the climax of the week (and the beginning of the end) and I feel the need for some familiar company so I go looking for the Smoking Duck guys again but find myself completely unable to locate their camp. Instead I wind up at Abstininthe when heat and tiredness finally strike, drinking a bitter tarragon-flavoured blend called The Decline of Western Civilization and chatting with Lance, a Professor of Astronomy from San Francisco.

When we part I'm still looking for familiar faces so I go to the Flying Monkey, where I fall into the company of the amiable band of Brits who run the bar, listen to some great mellow music over ice cold gin and tonics and generally relax before the big event. The Burn is at nine, so just after eight, as the last of the light is fading from the sky, we set off across the open playa toward that glowing green figure.



On all sides figures hung with light are emerging from the line of the city to converge on the centrepiece, symbol and in many ways purpose of the week. We get closer to the towering figure, first passing the vast ring of Mutant Vehicles which surrounds it, pumping out a hundred conflicting tunes, then settle in the darkness, crosslegged or kneeling, gazing inwards. Someone to my left passes round a huge jar of jellybeans, someone on my right passes a flask of ice-cold Baileys. We wait.

Finally there is movement - the Man, up to this point standing with arms at his sides, slowly raises them to the sky to form the familiar rejoicing figure. The movement is a kind of summons - after a few minutes a flickering glow approaches from our righthand side, and the procession of Lamplighters slowly passes by. These volunteers, dressed in white robes with a flame design around the hem, light over a thousand kerosene lamps along the main highways of the city every night. Tonight they form a solemn parade with drummers and pipes, carrying light around the circle of watchers.

There is roughly a half hour wait as the Lamplighters work their way round, and once they pass we are left in darkness for some time with nothing visible happening. The crowd gets restive, the Black Rock Rangers on crowd control duty trying to keep the energy up by encouraging chants back and forth between sections.

Light returns with an incredible parade of firedancers, who spread out around the entire circle and put on an extraordinary show, spinning burning staffs, poi, fans and hula hoops in perfect time, weaving and dancing in intricate patterns, advancing and retreating and interlinking in dazzling display.

The dancers retreat further into the circle and a firework display begins over the Man, white rockets hurtling up and bursting all around him until he is almost obscured. Lasers sweep the figure from all sides, cutting green lines through the accumulating smoke. Then finally flames begin at the base of the pyre.

The crowd noise rises to a crescendo - joyful but with a strange hard edge. We've been waiting a long time to see this and there's almost an element of hate in the yelling, a glorying in the destruction of the figure who's watched over us all week. Joy, regret and destructiveness wrapped into one, the emotion is extraordinary. The cocoon of fire rises around the whole figure now, and the cheering and chanting continues as it begins to disintegrate.

When the Man finally collapses, the crowd breaks and closes in on the fire in a yelling mass. The Rangers have cleared aside and we run and rush around the bonfire, jump and dance in the light of the flames. It seems that everyone moves toward the front once, to get close, to feel the heat of the flames, then moves away through the incoming crowd of followers to disperse across the desert.

Head ringing, I ramble back across the playa to the Flying Monkey where we dance and drink and party till late, and talk about the Burn and the fall and the fire.

Labels: barbie death camp and wine bistro, Black Rock City, Burning Man, burning the man, cosmic elves, fire dancers, flying monkey, lamplighters, Nevada

For the first time I decide to start the day slowly, particularly since I'm still a little wobbly from the previous night. I make coffee on the trangia, have a luxurious brunch of Beef-a-Roni (with fragments of actual red meat!) and stay in the shade of my lean-to reading and writing till early afternoon, when the flapping of my tarpaulin indicates the wind is picking up.



Standing up to see over it I can see a swirling cloud of dust, with darker clouds above, hiding the hills away in the distance. The wind is getting really intense now and the storm is approaching fast. My neighbour Rebecca is struggling with her tent which is attempting to fly away (tents turn into kites out here very easily) and together we get it pinned down with some extra tent pegs.

Rebecca invites me down to her camp on Esplanade, the Playa Surfers, to be a bit more comfortable during the storm, and I'm gathering my gear together when the storm sweeps down toward us. I literally have seconds to slip on my goggles and filter mask before it hits, first a minute-long wash of white dust then a spattering, regrettably brief, of deliciously ice-cold raindrops, moving so fast they sting the skin.



With the first wave of the storm passed we secure camp and head for Esplanade (the street which runs along the front of Black Rock City, around the edge of the central playa plain) where I spend a very mellow couple of hours with Rebecca's crowd of seriously laid-back California surfers (plus a couple of Canadians), just lounging, chatting and people-watching - a fulltime activity here.

Mid-afternoon, (despite a few more waves of dust still washing around the shade structure), we move out to Soulicious, a house and soul club on Desert which even in the scorching midafternoon heat is jumping with roughly a hundred people dancing in the courtyard. We dance, and gasp in the shade, and dance again, and then the wind picks up and vision begins to close in again. Maybe a quarter of the crowd squash into the bar but the DJ turns up the bass and the rest of us don goggles and masks and just keep going.



Finally I head out into the streets to see the storm in action, and wander the streets in the whiteness. There are still any number of citizens out and about despite near-zero visibility and the constant swirling of dust into every available orifice - I pass any number of cyclists, walkers and one guy hula-hooping in the middle of the street.



Bizarrely (and Burnishly) this is the point at which I finally locate my friend Santi, who is standing on a street corner hugging people and shouting "Happy dust storm!" at everyone. We retire to his group's tourbus, I meet his girlfriend and we spend a companionable half hour getting caught up. After that he has camp activities to get on with, so I walk on and wait out the rest of the storm in the Moonshine Lounge discussing distilling with their main still technician.



The air clear once again I find myself pretty hungry and it seems like the ideal time to go looking for that Holy Grail of playa food - the Tuna Guys. I follow the directions from the Smoking Duck lads and find a side-yard off Desert, unidentified by any sign, where a group of men are presiding over a smoking barbecue and surrounded by happily munching fans.

They've run out of paper plates so Kermit, who is manning the grill, fills my pint mug with simply the best fish I've ever tasted, big lumps of incredibly fresh albacore, marinated, succulent and perfectly charred at the edges. I hang out with the guys for a while - they're all professional fishermen, several owning their own boats, and they're fanatical about their product and love the opportunity to share it.



Filled with fish to the point of bliss I move next door to the "Yes Have Some" Alien Tiki Bar for the evening, and having struck up a conversation with their Dubliner barman I'm invited to join them on a tour of the playa in their pedal-powered car, a fine vehicle equipped with a substantial cooler on the bonnet. Several of the staff dress up in replica space-suits for the occasion.

We pedal across the plain viewing the amazing artwork, fire shows and stages, until after midnight. I arrive home to find another dune in my tent. It's all part of the experience.

Labels: Black Rock City, Burning Man, Dust storm, moonshine lounge, Nevada, playa surfers, tuna guys, yes have some alien tiki bar

Once again I get moving in good time (although a bit fuzzy and hungover) and head out to the open playa to get my first proper look at the sculptures and art installations. It's an incredible experience to just wander in this barren desert, finding amazing constructions standing out there all on their own.

Among so many others I see the Steampunk Treehouse (a tree and treehouse built entirely out of welded and riveted metal):

And a set of arches set up like a theremin to play music as people step in and out of them:

I spend some time at the biggest installation on the playa - Crude Awakening, an incredible fullsize replica oil derrick built out of wood and surrounded by giant worshipping figures woven out of steel cable and metal rods.



Further on across the playa are two real oil tanker trucks woven into an elegant dance (Big Rig Jig):

And nearby is the Temple.



The Temple is a yearly feature of Burning Man, but designed differently every year and with a different theme. It's built from beautiful delicately jigsawed pale wood in the most intricate patterns. This year it's the Temple of Forgiveness and has been built in a roughly Japanese style with a tall square tower with bowed roof beam and four entranceways. All over it Burners write messages to people they want to forgive or just words of love and encouragement for others who come here, and even partway through the week it's already covered with messages in pen, pencil, crayon and paint.



The atmosphere at the Temple is completely different from anywhere else on the playa - it's quiet, reserved, deeply spiritual in a universally human way. It's very moving to stand in the shadow of this structure and read the outpourings of people's hearts. I leave genuinely moved, and feel strangely detached for a little while after.

Eventually I re-enter the city around the 9:00 plaza. I've had a great conversation with a guy on the Bride of Burning Man art car the previous evening, and he's left me with an open invitation for breakfast but my grasp of the location of his camp is poor and I'm not really in the frame of mind for skilled navigation. I wander idly around the general area but end up instead finding the Deep End, a replica Western town square with a DJ booth on one side and a saloon on the other.

Even mid-morning there is a DJ up and a small crowd of dancers in the square. I push through the swing doors of the Saloon and find a stool at the bar. The bartender, actually a bar and club owner from San Francisco, is also rather hungover and is mixing something he calls "Whatever I damn well feel like, as long as it's got Red Bull and tequila in". He's dropping large lumps of watermelon into the blender, seeds and all. The drink is deliciously refreshing if a bit chewy and restores my energy nicely, and there's further joy in the frequent bursts of spray from the misters strung all across the ceiling.

I spend some time in the bar chatting with Kevin, a fellow first-timer from Seattle, and when we end up talking whiskey he takes me back to his tent for a few glasses of an amazing single malt he can't persuade anyone else to appreciate. Returning to the Deep End we find the bar out of ice, a genuine emergency in this parched land. We mount an expedition to Arctica3 at the end of the block, returning with a huge bag to be welcomed like conquering heroes, cleared a space at the (now-packed) bar and showered with drinks.

The pleasureable attention eases, however, as the wind blowing through the open-sided bar picks up and the air outside begins to look a little opaque. My first playa dust storm is rising. Visibility shrinks as more and more dust picks up into the air, until we reach a complete whiteout - outside the saloon is a solid wall of perfect white, even the closest buildings are invisible. Inside the air is full of dust, but we are hardened Black Rock citizens by now and the party continues pretty much as before, if with a little more dust in the drinks.



After maybe twenty minutes the storm subsides and I split to check on my tent. On arrival I find that there is now a substantial amount of playa in my tent but no major damage. I dust off a little, relax through the hottest part of the day and after another good dinner of sardines and rice I set out again, this time to return to the Green Man UK Burners pub in hopes of running into Santi.

The Green Man has a great atmosphere and a nice crowd of mixed Brits and others, and although I don't find Santi I do get to witness a fine evening of dreadful karaoke interspersed with Eurovision on their projection TV. At midnight I attempt to reach the Smoochdome where Yomsa is DJing, but the art car I'm on deviates to the middle of nowhere for us to have an excellent lightsaber battle with a group of pirates.

Labels: art, Burning Man, crude awakening, deep end, Nevada, steampunk treehouse

The white suit has finally acquired enough dirt (the shirt is actually playa-dust brown over the entire collar and both wrists) to be unwearable, so with no regret whatsoever I don my kilt. The practicality of the garment is immediately apparent - apart from the joy of getting the most cooling potential out of every breeze, the huge pockets (one of which can hold a water bottle plus a bunch of other stuff without stretching) mean I can carry all the paraphernalia I need for the day without needing a bag.



I start out clockwise this time, into the area I was in late last night but which I haven't explored by day, and shortly pass the huge dome belonging to Bloop, a performance group from Seattle. The board outside is advertising an African Funk workshop in ten minutes, and I'm pleased to find something to get involved in right away.

The class is taken by Eric, a graceful and talented instructor who is having a little trouble with his leopard-print wrap, and it's very energetic. Even in the relative cool of Bloop's dome we are all panting and sweating gallons by the time we're halfway through. Water breaks shrink from every ten minutes to every two by the end, and I run through my entire water supply in the one hour. Nonetheless it's an enormously enjoyable hour, lots of stomping and leaping and clapping. I suck but I have a great time.

After a water refill I head back to the Alternative Energy camp again where I meet Nathan standing outside on the intersection with a squirt bottle and hosing people down as they pass, a popular and sociable Black Rock City activity. We hang out for a while under the shade netting until a stiltwalker and cyclist in devil horns accost us and invite us to "A Snowball's Chance in Hell", which is now taking place down the block in Hushville. At a stall tucked away in the middle of the Hushville village we line up with a sizeable crowd to spin the Wheel of Sin, confess an interesting sin (present or future) to a dapper and elegant devil and receive a cup of shaved ice in flavours including Rawberry, Purple Pain and Marshmisery.



Slurping my ice I head down to the promenade and wander for a while but it's getting hot again and I finally go to ground in the cool of Amphibia, a multi-coloured dome hung with cloth pondweed and paintings on cloth of frogs and turtles and presided over by Aunt Phibia, a wonderfully slightly insane lady who zooms around the tent welcoming everyone, plays little tunes on the recorder and has written her own Pledge of Allegiance To the Earth which she requires everyone to recite with her. The paintings are all hers and they're beautiful, with really deep textured surface effects and lifelike subjects.

s the afternoon cools I move on round to Media Mecca again where I finally locate Yomsa. He's in a flowing white robe hung with gadgets and little trinkets and he looks like he's about to collapse - I gather he's been working long hours coordinating journalists and partying pretty much all the rest of the time. Nonetheless his wide smile and dauntless energy are still apparent, and he bustles me in to the bar to get drinks and for me to tell him my story so far, and shows me the remarkable view from the observation deck on the roof.



Yomsa has to go back to his camp to shower and change, so we part ways promising to meet again at Opulent Temple in the evening, (one of BRCs premier dance locations) and I nab a handful of media bar snacks and head clockwise again to finish my explorations. I end up meeting the guys from New York again, at their camp - the Smoking Duck - where they're engaged in wearing silly hats and mixing cocktails.

We get re-acqainted, and over a few Manhattans one of the guys passes me on a priceless piece of Burner word of mouth. There are a group called the Tuna Guys, hardened sea-fishermen from Oregon who every year pack a trailer with ice and unbelievably fresh fish straight off their own boats, ship it to Burning Man and serve it to anyone who comes by. They've been so incredibly popular in past years (and pestered by the Health Department) that they no longer register in the events guide or the map or show signs. However, they can be found around 9:15 and Desert if you ask.

It's getting on now and I cut directly across the Playa to get to the Opulent Temple. The Smoking Duck guys, afeared for my safety without lights, have filled my pockets with glowsticks. The OT is a remarkable almost-totally open environment, with huge oval screens at the front, an outer ring of massive girders and overhead flamethrowers for peak moments. I never do locate Yomsa in the huge crowd (in theory it shouldn't have been too hard - he's wearing a wedding dress) but the music is awesome, I have a fantastic evening of frenzied dancing and I limp home after midnight very satisfied.

Labels: african funk, amphibia, bloop, Burning Man, media mecca, Nevada, New York, opulent temple, tuna guys

Waking early I decide to get moving and find some activities to get involved in. Leaving one's camp at Burning Man is a fairly involved undertaking - those who know me know I like to carry a lot of gear with me when I go anywhere, but on the playa it's a necessity. My standard kit for a three-hour-ish jaunt: Two bottles of water (each about two pints I reckon, clipped to my belt on carabiners), cup (also on a carabiner - essential for free drinks), goggles (advisable in case of dust storms), filter mask (ditto - actually I got sick of it and just used a bandanna soaked in water), notebook and pen (one tends to end up noting down a lot of names and events), camera, knife, gifts (my secrets in their envelopes), event guide, map.

The event plan is daunting in its size - there are at least twenty activities starting every single hour all day - and at first I spend a long time working through it and mapping events into a notebook. In practice I don't end up actually doing them - I either can't find them in time, get distracted or sidetracked.

I spend a lot of time just wandering aimlessly - there are a lot of camps open but I'm still really stuck in a mindset of territories and I feel strangely uncomfortable just pushing into somebody's tent. It frustrates me because it's exactly the kind of fear I came here to drop - the fear of imposing, the ingrained geek-kid feeling that I'm going to be in the way. I know in my head that no-one feels that way but I can't seem to shift it.

I return for lunch frustrated and angry at myself, and go back out again determined to overcome my hangups lest I leave Burning Man having done nothing but walk past a thousand camps. Finally I find an airy and quiet camp on the corner of the Alternative Energy village and tentatively wander under their shade netting to sit down at the bar.

I am welcomed warmly by the crew, hugged by Aurora the camp mother, given crushed-ice margaritas and I spend a wonderful couple of hours chatting with the folks who come and go, making several new friends. Eventually I wander out with Nathan, who is camped next door, both of us feeling we should explore some of the workshops on offer. But it's the hottest part of the day and the temperature rapidly saps our motivation.

The afternoon sun is blistering out here, and it has a powerful subconscious effect - you don't feel physically tired, but it just makes you feel you don't want to do anything. I do however develop a plan for later - a camp called Bridget on 3:00 and Desert are having a Dress in White party at 8 o'clock, and since I'm already in my white suit it seems ideal.



Eventually I return to my camp and nap through the hottest part of the day. A pretty tasty dinner of fish and rice and I head out for the anti-clockwise side of town. I arrive just after eight as the Bridget team are gearing up. Bellboy and Geoff (pronounced phonetically, I'm told), a couple of guys in immaculate white suits are hooking up white LEDs, loading the sound system with techno and lighting two huge propane flares on 15-foot poles which cast dramatic light over the whole camp.

The partiers are already flowing in and the Bridget crew begin mixing huge quantities of something called a White Chocolate Martini (there are a lot of recipes but I'm not sure which one they used) which proves to be fatally drinkable - it really tastes like white chocolate but has a serious kick of vodka underneath. The crowd grows and grows and everyone is loose and friendly, I'm introduced to so many people I forget as many names as I remember. We are raided at one point by a rival group dressed entirely in black but in true Burning Man fashion they are welcomed into the group and placated with White Chocolate Martinis.

An art car called the Blood Vessel, a modified hearse with purple neon bats on the side and a 6-person cupola on the roof, stops by several times on its route through the city to blast us with gothic electronica and darkwave from its powerful sound system and shout friendly abuse. On their third pass I decide to follow the music, and followed by a few other revellers I clamber up and we wave goodbye to the Bridget party.

The car moves off and we cruise through the city, the music rising around us. In the full darkness Black Rock City is an incredible spectacle. The dusty bazaar bustle is gone and the city is an endless network of coloured light on black, clean and dazzling. Art cars and bikes are lit up with glow tubes, LEDs, fairy lights, spotlights, luminous tape and spray. Some bikes have an external framework of light tubes which makes them look like fish and crocodiles and dragons weaving through the night city. Camps have beacons, lamps, neon signs and sculptures, flames that go 20 feet into the air. Everyone has glowing necklaces, clipon LEDs, light-up lightsabers, headlights or full luminous suits.

We turn on 4:00 and roll right out onto the open playa, the great curve of hardpack desert which forms the other side of the semicircle. Out here are the sculptures and installations which are a large part of the purpose of the event. Almost all of them are spotlight, lit by flames or glow all by themselves, and the playa is swarming with more people and bikes carrying their own lights. We cruise out into the vast expanse until the city is one long curve around half the horizon, encircling us, the music still pumping out around us, dancing, the bass beating up through the soles of our feet.

Finally we reach the opposite side, the 9:00 plaza, and the Blood Vessel stops so we can unload. I find the Flying Monkey, an airy and relaxed dome with some great music where a fellow Brit with flaming red hair and a Union Jack jacket serves me a glass of what appears to be vodka and apple juice before handcuffing me to the bar alongside about a dozen other patrons. We talk and dance to the extent that we can move, and once our time is served we are released and I wander on again, just drifting where my feet take me.

I end up on the second-storey roof of the Automatic Subconscious a couple of doors down, looking out over the landscape of the city and discussing beer with some guys from New York. At about midnight my energy finally gives out. I walk the long walk home and collapse in my lean-to, the music of the city still rolling over me from all sides.

Labels: Black Rock City, Burning Man, Dust storm, Nevada, White Chocolate Martini

From waking at 6:00 the day is a steady progression of packing and preparing until I dump my rucksack, shoulder bag and water carriers by the motel office and hand in my key. I had arranged a lift out to the playa through the Burning Man rideshare website (they were asking $40.00, which seemed steep but cheaper than many), but having called them the previous night and in the morning and had no answer I conclude that they're out of contact and decide to take my chances at the rideshare site next to Twin City Surplus.

It's a fair few blocks over, and I decide to get a taxi. The driver is a complete cliche, a racist arrogant sod who immediately weighs into a rant about how all the problems in the country are caused by immigrants, it's all the damn Iraqis who arrive in this country and never work again, how come decent people have to work while these ragheads get handouts and free houses, we're saving their country, blah blah blah.

I'm extremely glad to see the back of him and his tirade of poison at TCS, despite the fact that I'm immediately seized upon by a local news crew. It may be because I'm standing there with a 30Kg rucksack, 10 gallons of water and a white linen suit and fedora. I'm saved from an interview by my residual hacking cough which prevents me from saying 5 words in a row, and carry my gear across to the rideshare centre where I am instantly offered a ride by Matthew, an advertising worker from California.

There are three others already waiting for a lift, but they want to stay together and Matthew barely has room for one. They are classic children of the playa, with ripped jeans, sandals, colourful wraps and a collection of squeaky toy flowers, radiating joy and gentle goodwill, and they send us off with cheers and waves. After a quick stop into Twin City Surplus to pick up a few last items of equipment, Matthew and I get on the road.

My companion is in his late thirties, with a shaved head, stubbly beard and a lot of nervous twitchy energy, and he'd actually only stopped in Reno to get grommets for his friends' tent and spotted the rideshare sign as he pulled in. It's his first year and he seems an odd type - quite driven and work-focussed - to be heading for Black Rock City. But I soon get the familiar vibes of warmth, curiosity and openness I've recognised in other Burners.

We talk about music and our expectations as we roll on east and the landscape becomes more and more barren and dramatic. The hills rise on all sides, and the scrubby prairie land begins to recede, replaced by pure flat white desert. The sun blazes down, and away in the distance we begin to see dust clouds drifting across the broad low valleys, sometimes twisting up into the loose funnel of a dust devil before dispersing.

Within a few miles out of Reno we see our first signs of Burners - vans with the Man displayed on a window in tape or messages painted, "Burning Man or bust", "In Dust we Trust", bikes strapped to the back covered in purple fur and glow strips, roofs covered in girders and barrels, spars and parachute bundles for construction, sculptures and painted boards. One bus is covered in an elaborate collage made from shards of mirror, reflecting the light in a dazzling display, some tinted and throwing back vivid colours. As we approach Gerlach, the last town before the playa, they are all around us.

The traffic starts to bunch up as the road gets rougher and narrower, and finally we round a corner onto an expanse of white desert and see clusters of glimmering shapes on the horizon - the edge of Black Rock City. Ahead of us is a long winding ribbon of traffic, hundreds of cars, vans and RVs slowly rolling toward the edge of the city. As we get closer we are divided into lanes, and we take a temporary detour to Will Call so I can pick up my ticket. The "road" is marked out by impossibly fragile strings of flags between deep-sunk posts, which only seem to emphasise the emptiness beyond.

Stepping out of the car is to step onto the playa for the first time. The surface is hard-packed, cracked and dried-out earth, with a light covering of the dreaded playa dust, an ultrafine alkali talc that gets into everything, coats everything, and sucks the moisture out of the air and anything it touches. It's both the essence and the nemesis of Black Rock City, with a near-religious significance in the iconography and mythology of the event.

Periodically the wind rises and the world disappears in an opaque white cloud. In between, you can look in any distance and see white desert and blue sky practically to the horizon. It's an incredible feeling to be here in this environment so hostile to human presence, like standing on the surface of the moon, you're in defiance of the very land you stand on. I give my code and ID at the window of a tiny hut lost in the expanse, and I'm handed the piece of green cardboard which was booked a billion miles and a thousand years ago, by some other Mark Hewitt who I don't know I'd even recognise now.

The girl at the window welcomes me warmly...but they don't say "Welcome" here, or "Enjoy your stay", or "Have fun".

They say "Welcome home".

After a long queue we finally make it to the greeters' station, where a genial bearded guy in black flowing tunic and trousers and a hyper twentysomething blond chap in a pink wrap and goggles tell us the basics of navigating to our slots, reinforce the survival rules (drink drink and drink again), hand us bundles of literature including the vital Theme Camp map and the huge events guide, hug us thoroughly, cover us in playa dust and make us ring the Virgin Bell before sending us on our way.

Finally we are at the outer loop, known as Landfill (Black Rock City is roughly semi-circular, built as a series of concentric streets, which are named in alphabetical order starting from the centre - this year's theme is the Green Man so the streets are named after environments. They are crossed by radial streets named by hours.) Here Matthew drops me off at the walk-in camping zone, a broad space on the edge of the city in which vehicles are not allowed. I stand in the emptiness just the other side of the ropes and look inward across the miles of tents and RVs and structures, and it all seems wonderfully unreal. Only a part of the city's population (and therefore its structure) is in place, the greatest concentration near the centre around the "civil buildings" which are constructed in advance by the legendary Department of Public Works.

These heroes of the city arrive here three weeks in advance, and camp in the most basic conditions in the middle of this isolated desert laying out the road markings, building Centre Camp and the associated buildings, bringing in power and sanitation, building the Man, the gates, the burn fireplaces and many more vital structures. They will be here four weeks after everyone else leaves, dismantling, storing and shipping out everything they brought here, cleaning up and making the final sweeps for litter and lost items.

I decide to go with a very simple structure for my tent - basically a lean-to. I put down my smaller tarp, lay the larger one over the top and tie down one side with tent pegs (the side facing away from the city, where most of the wind comes from). With a bit of experimentation I find that I can tie down the other two corners and prop up the inner side with two of my lightweight poles, giving a sloping shelter which the wind should blow over, with enough space at the open edge for me to sit upright with headroom (vital for comfort and morale if I'm spending any length of time in the tent). For resistance to the brutal playa winds (which can exceed 70mph) I will just take the poles out when I'm away, letting it fall flat and pinning it down with my water carriers to provide no profile to the wind.

By the time I have set out my camp I have been greeted and welcomed by all my neighbours. Trancer and Euphonia are on my left. He's a whip-thin shaved-headed and heavily tanned career hippie and philosopher with an endless supply of mellow warmth and a big gappy grin, a veteran Burner. She's a first-timer like myself, a small, slim and very sweet girl with short dark hair who approaches everything here with wide-eyed openness.

On the desert side of me is Luigi, a former insurance worker turned artist with green hair, cowboy boots and a "Free Spankings or Hugs" t-shirt (he carries his spanking paddle with him at all times) with a drawl and a puckish ironic sense of humour. On my right are Catherine and Rebecca, two perfect blond California surfer girls who are here with a theme camp (the Playa Surfers) but like the quiet out here so they can get some sleep.

I get my tent up by about 3:00, as the hottest part of the day comes in, so I crash out to recover my energy, rehydrate (any exertion here makes your water loss rocket, and I've gone through about 3 pints of water in an hour and have still become dangerously dehydrated) and wait for the heat to recede. Finally at a little after four it begins to cool a little and I go exploring and looking for friends.

The partially completed city is still dozing in the heat - everywhere there are half-finished domes and shade structures with citizens sleeping in every sliver of shade, feet sticking out of cars, RVs with every window covered in silver foil to retain some cool inside. Almost all the theme camps are unfinished and closed at this point, most of them having only arrived today. Still there are amazing things everywhere - thirty-foot towers wrapped in snapping flags, a giant false-fronted desert fortress, structures veiled in multi-coloured translucent cloth, plastic, silver tarpaulins.

A number of art cars are already on the move, mobile sculptures licensed by the City's Department of Mutant Vehicles (and the only vehicles allowed to move within the city unless arriving or leaving) in the form of forty-foot dragons, giant fish, a pirate ship, a japanese teahouse. They cruise about the streets providing rides to anyone who wants them.

The main UK contingent have the Green Man pub in Avalon Village, an authentic English public house with a bar, karaoke, roaring (false) fire and dartboard, but it turns out my mate Santi hasn't come with them. He's with his new employers, and no-one knows where they're camped.

I loop back to Centre Camp, the heart of the city, a huge ring built around a giant cafe and chillout tent and the home of such vital institutions as Arctica (the ice distribution camp), the Recycle Centre which amongst other things takes in and crushes thousands of aluminium cans all week, Earth Guardians (who coordinate Burners in eco-positive activities like cleanup and restoration of wild land) and the Pickle Place, which supplies pickles.

I locate Playa Info and leave a message for Santi on the electronic message board there, register my camera and look in on Media Mecca next door, where Yomsa (legendary Santacon leader and general joyful maniac) works with the Black Rock City press team coordinating film and print journalists, providing tours and quotes and doing the vital work of maintaining Burning Man's good relationship with the outside world. No luck there either, he's out organising photo opportunities.

I'm hungry and pretty footsore so I return to my camp for a meal of ramen and some quiet time chatting with my neighbours. It seems like with so much of the City not yet active, and many activities not kicking off yet, this would be a good night to get ahead on sleep and have the maximum energy for the buildup through the week, so I take an early night. As I settle in, fireworks begin to rise into the night sky. Black Rock City is never silent, and I doze off to the throb of a dozen beats from all over the playa.

Labels: Black Rock City, Burning Man, Camp, Nevada

My last day before Burning Man, and excitement and fear are beginning to rise in equal part. I spend most of the day on more packing and planning, and I finally get together my rations for the week. I've had all kinds of radical plans for food, but in the end I settle on a simple, relatively light and at least moderately nutritious diet - a Clif bar (nuts and all kinds of nutritious stuff with vitamins and minerals) per day for an easy breakfast, a packet of Top Ramen per day (quick, easy lunches), a bag of rice and tins of tuna and sardines in tomato sauce to mix with it, a tin of Chef Boyardee Beef-a-roni and a tin of mixed veg, plus a tub of Vienna Sausages.

I fill both water carriers and check whether I can carry them along with my rucksack (answer: only just), write out my secrets and throw out everything I possibly can to save weight. Then I set out to enjoy my last evening of comfort for some time: beers, crisps, cupcakes, a microwave barbecue rib hoagie and way too much TV.

Labels: Burning Man, camping, Nevada, reno

Morning spent preparing kit, throwing out everything possible and figuring out ways to compact what's left, and trying to plan how I'm going to lay out my shelter. Think I'm pretty much just going to peg down the edges firmly then use my lightweight poles to prop it up for a bit of sitting or sleeping space when I need them, let it lay flat over my kit (and more windproof) when I'm not in it. From all accounts I'm not going to be spending much time in it anyway. I've got a silver insulated blanket to use as a reflective outer layer over most of it, should help make a slightly better heat barrier.

In the afternoon more shopping, picking up a few missing bits of supplies, energy bars, and finally a replacement hat - can't find a Panama anywhere in town but I pick up a rather smart canvas fedora which will match well with my suit and provides a nice bit of shade (it also has reinforced holes for a strap, essential on the playa due to high winds). In the name of space and weight I finally unload my Fuji SLR camera - it's been pretty much inevitable for the last month, I'm really not using it and it's bulky, heavy and costly to lug around. I get a reasonable price for it in a pawn shop which helps offset my new purchases.

I finally decide what I'm going to give away at BM - all my other ideas have either fizzled or become irrelevent as my journey and myself have changed. I get some really nice vellum paper and little envelopes, and plan to write down secrets (probably seven, one for each day of the event) that I've never told anyone, to give away to seven people who I get to know in the week. Shall see how it turns out. If the opportunity arises of course I'll be helping out my neighbours and theme camps with some practical stuff as well.

Labels: Burning Man, camping, Nevada, reno