09.27.06
Burning Man 2006 – Part 4
Friday, September 1st, 2006 – What a long strange trip it’s been
(Note: I started borrowing pictures from others on flickr since I didn’t take nearly enough. Hope noone minds! So some of these pictures aren’t necessarily chronologically correct, but they are representative of the familair sights.)
Friday really summed up the trip and was a special night. If I had to pick the best day/night of the experience, I don’t think I could have chosen between Wednesday and Friday. By this time I was really into the swing of things. I was acclimated to the desert, I had a great group of people to hang out with, I knew my way around the playa, everything was just falling perfectly into place.
I spent most of the day working in the studio until that evening. Like usual I headed over to camp DDI to meet up with everyone. There had been some talk about challenging Deathguild to a match; two champions competing in Dance Dance Immolation and then a match in Thunderdome. Deathguild is the camp responsible for bringing Thunderdome to the playa every year. It’s a bunch of goth kids that seem to be quite full of themselves. Granted they do have some great post-apocalyptic cars.
Now DDI couldn’t just walk over and say “Hey, we want to challenge you guys.” It had to be done with the appropriate flair and flames. Several people suited up in proximity suits, and the rest of us donned DDI flightsuits. Rubin loaned me his to wear for the evening as I was basically adopted by the camp at this point. We gathered several fire accessories including a rope dart, poi, two flaming swords, and a flame thrower carried by someone on stilts. We marched down the Esplanade chanting D-D-I as we made our way to Thunderdome. When we got closer we stopped to light up all of the fire and marched the last bit in. A prepared challenge was read to Deathguild and the audience at the Thunderdome and then we turned around and marched off like the badass geeks we were. It went off well and we gathered quite a bit of people wondering “what the parade was for.”
Back at camp everyone scattered off to their nightly plans and activities. Rubin and I got together with David and Heather and soon met up with Nathan with the intent to go out and ride art cars that night. Both Rubin and I were both Burning Man virgins and neither had ridden one yet.
Our first stop for the evening was 2pir where we spent some time watching how people interacted with the canvas of flamethrowers that had been provided. It was a lot of fun watching how differently people played. And the smile on their face as they walked away from the platforms to the cheers and clapping of all the spectators gathered was a treat to witness. We also had the chance to witness one of the most beautiful things I had seen on the playa. Mary danced with fire oh so elegently on the platform as flames shot up all around her. I had to pick my jaw up off of the dust I was in such awe.
After who knows how long at 2pir we regrouped and decided we should keep exploring. Since we were already pretty far out in the deep playa, we figured we’d make a trek all the way out to the trash fence. The trash fence is an orange fence that basically forms a perimeter around the area designated for Burning Man. You’re not supposed to go outside of this fence. The walk out there was a little bit longer than we thought, but a nice one.
We got to chatting and I started rambling on about how great this was. I mentioned the enourmous party at my back, the great group of people I had met, the stars in the sky (the Milky Way is beautiful out there), the shadows of the mountains in the distance, and nothing put possibilities for exploration in front of us. I had one of those moments where you can’t help but go “damn, this is it, this is great.”
The walk out through the deep playa felt very much like we were exploring a different planet. The playa is a prehistoric lake bed, so it’s perfectly flat, and it dries up and cracks into chunks. This in combination with us in the dark, surround by such surreal sights and sounds, plus the only light coming from our headlamps made it feel very other-wordly. It felt like we were millions of miles away from Earth and that we were interpid explorers, wandering and experiencing all that we could. While we were walking out there we had an odd discovery. In the middle of the nothingness we happened to choose a path that brought us across a stack of mud “scales” that someone had created from playa pieces. We paused to reflect on this and the fact that someone somewhere had been at this spot and had taken the time to create this. They didn’t know whether anyone would see it, and chances are they thought noone would. But they still took the time to sit down and create it because they wanted to. We took a minute to appreciate someone’s random contribution and then left it for the next set of explorers to stumble upon.
We finally made it out to the trash fence and spent some time sitting in the darkness looking back on the city of multi-colored lights and various thumps of bass and music. The sheer size of what we were a part of was amazing. While we were out there a random woman jogged, yes jogged, by us without a single light on her. I believe Heather said it most succinctly with, “It was absurd in its normalcy.” After some time we realized that we still had not ridden an art car and that it was a long walk back to the city. We saw a familiar “snail car” roll by and we went chasing after it. Unfortunately the snail was too fast to catch up to, but they stopped and we wandered over to say hi. The couple that had journeyed out in the car looked like they were having their own moment, so we complimented them on their ride and began the walk back into the city.
Along the way we found a random door set up on the playa. Rubin crawled through it and then it was locked behind him. He’s stuck on this side of the door now.
We also came across a setup that had a box of envelopes and cards. You were meant to write your hopes and/or fears on a card, your address on an envelope and then put it into the box. The creators would mix up the cards and envelopes and mail them out to the various people after the event. Rubin got the last envelope, but there was a final card left in there for me to write on. I jotted down something about refusing to let my fears overshadow my hopes, dropped it in the box, and we continued on our journey. A random mini-golf setup distracted us for a few minutes and then it was off to walk the Esplanade and find the roller skating rink.
Yes, there is a theme camp that sets up a roller skating rink on the playa, complete with skates to borrow. David and Heather were feeling up to the task, but Rubin, Nathan and I opted to watch as we appreciated our only slightly bruised bodies at this point. Everyone around was having such a good time, so many smiles, no drama, no fighting, no ugly faces. It was great. There was a couple out in the middle of the rink dancing their asses off like there was no tomorrow with the biggest smiles on their face. It was just people having a good time and it was so refreshing.
Some photos during the day of the Roller Disco and a dark one from nighttime I found on flickr:
After David and Heather had enough we continued walking down the Esplanade. We happened to be by my camp so we stopped in for some supplies real quick. A few blocks down we stumbled upon Camp I Am. Drawn in by the incredible panoramic shots of previous years at Burning Man we spent some time there. After checking out the panoramas we discovered that there was a pay-phone there, and it worked, and it was free. Using the wonders of satellite image and a modified phone booth they were giving the playa a phone that called anywhere in the world for free. While we were there everyone respected a “one phone call” guideline. It was interesting to see people connect to others who weren’t on the playa. One group of people called and sung Happy Birthday to someone, another person called someone and walked away with moist eyes, others called parents or friends just to say hi. It was 2am Pacific time, but I still felt like I should call my father to say hi or at least leave a message at 5am in North Carolina. The love and support my family has shown me in their encouragement of me following my bliss has been wonderful. My dad even went out of his way to send me the kite we flew as well as a little extra cash to help offset the expense of this trip. While I would have called my mom, I think she would have been not too happy to have been woken up at 5am on a Saturday morning. I knew my dad would either sleep through the call and get the message in the morning, or wouldn’t mind too terribly being woken up at the odd hour. I got the answering machine and left a short message telling him thanks for everything and then we headed back to the celebration on the Esplanade.
We decided that we should go make a stop at Center Camp and the Medical Tent to see how Nicole was doing. As we had prepared to leave earlier in that evening Nicole was being taken to the Med Tent. She was basically exhausted, having worked herself way too hard on 2pir and just in general. On the way to the Med Tent we made a quick detour down a side street to find some porta potties. In the bank of potties we came upon, we found the “Pimpest Potty on the Playa.” Someone had taken it upon themselves to clean out one of the porta potties, line the seat with fur, setup and light candles, put some art on the walls, and even provided a little stereo for music. Oh, and the kicker? a fresh _unopened_ roll of toilet paper. It was an amazing sight to see this late in the week.
We also ran into “Panic!” and “Don’t Panic!” They were a pair running around alternately screaming just that. As we were heading back on our mission to the Med Tent I noticed them consoling a random guy who wandered into the street crying. Very cool to see that random compassion from complete strangers to someone in need.
We finally made it to the Med Tent only to find out that Nicole had been discharged back to camp DDI. This was good news at least. Nathan split off and we wandered around Center Camp, slowly making our way in the direction of Camp DDI. We were walking and discussing the fact that we had accomplished many of our mini goals that evening, however we had not ridden an art car yet. Minutes later Heather noticed a familiar art car called the Moonshine Saloon. She recognized it because apparently it was stored/built at NIMBY. We ran over and jumped aboard. We were finally riding an art car! Mark that one off the list.
Some more pics borrowed from flickr
A few blocks later the art car came to a stop, we thanked them for the ride and walked the last few yards back to DDI to catch them finishing up for the night. I bid everyone good night and thanked them for an excellent time and made the surreal bike ride back across the playa to my tent, a comfortable air mattress, some good music and a smile on my face. The next morning I found myself waking up with my headphones still going, the smile remaining, and ready for another day in the greatest place on earth.
