Burn.

As my plane travels up and away from the glittering veins of Los Angeles sprawl it feels like the slow roll fog of waking up from a strange and great collective dream. Although there isn’t anything I can tell you about Burning Man that can’t be found elsewhere on the internet I can offer small glimpses from the life of a traveler amidst strong and beautiful company in one of the harshest deserts in the world. From it’s radical absurdity, mass inclusiveness and deeply moving spirit attempting to share anything of the past seven days feels much like the confusion and wonder of the place between asleep and awake where a dream, though thinning, remains tangible if you were just able to sit a while longer.

My journey to Black Rock City began eight hours into the Alaskan interior in the small town of McCarthy where I had been living for the summer. Through a last minute hitchhike with a rifle sling peddling mother and tangled haired daughter down the two hours of unpaved road followed by six hours in a van with a portly truck driver who despite his naval length beard, hummed and drummed along to the bubblegum pop that would crackle in and out on the old radio. A midnight escape from Anchorage, breakfast in Seattle and a much appreciated coffee in Los Angeles before being swept up by one of the most precious groups of people I’ve had the luck of meeting in my wandering. For two days we caught up on the year apart, gathered bicycles, groceries, costume jewels and army surplus goggles all that would accompany us in a small five seater car to what would become one of the most profound and magical weeks of my life…which at this point I still did not possess a ticket to.

I have a habit of procrastination and once mixed with my mantra of “It’ll all work out” through a series of rash decisions I had arrived in California, shopped for and was intent on setting out into the desert without the guarantee of entry to a long ago sold out event with the people who make me feel at home in my own skin. Hours of Ebay battles, craigslist leads and in a moment of desperation, writing in to the Black Rock City skydiving camp for the possibility of a tandem drop in (which for the record folks, doesn’t work) finally led to finding a ticket seven hours before we were to set off.

The road to BRC, Nevada was long and thirteen miles outside of the gates we were held at a standstill that would end up lasting fifteen hours. Rain had set in turning the normally dusty desert expanse into a mud pit fit to hold 66,000 inhabitants. As we sat around the car sandwiched between spray painted RVs and mini vans brimming with easy build yurts a ranger drove up and down the line of cars as far as the eye could see cheerily singing “Somebody dropped a lot of water on the desert, and now the playa is closed!” to the tune of Old Macdonald over a megaphone. It was one part frustrating three parts hilarious, the thing about Burning Man is if you’re taking yourself too seriously it’s going to be a very trying week.

As our newly dusty vehicle crept towards the entrance we were told to step out and over a line drawn in the dirt by a bearded man dressed as a wizard and ring a bell in celebration of the changes our lives were about to take on. My friends and I switched back and forth between uncertainty, excitement, the great mystery of what lay ahead of us while quietly taking time to laugh at the absurdity of it all. In the darkness we drove past cars that were built to be steam punk octopuses spitting fire and neon dragons that boomed music into the night air. In the streets pantsless men (shirt cockers is the term I came to find out later in the week) whizzed by on LED lit bicycles with glowing art installations gleaming across the playa. To arrive in the dark to the ongoing chaos of a playground fueled by the imagination and brilliant engineering of thousands was overwhelming and like nothing I could have imagined.

As for the rest?

With the daylight came the heat, The dust storms that could’ve left you swearing you were on the moon, Unrelenting acts of kindness, Men and women born from the pages of Peter Pan, Nights lit up like the most magnificent fever dream, Dancing and crying, Letting in and letting go, Personal growth and beautiful, dusty bodies. The only shame to be passed around was if you were to happen to do the unspeakable and litter, There was the wild, The tame, The strange, The wise, There was exploration and sunrise with strangers, The introspection of what it means to be here together feeling all of this so uniquely, The pushing of boundaries and openness to firsts, The rawness of breaking down, All of this, In such different ways, From such different walks of life, Felt together, And alone.

Now, just three days later I stand oceans away grabbing at the wisps of memory that twist their way through my fingertips until remembering the fire’s burn.

There is beauty in creation for the sake of creation. Worth in building up and letting go. And solace in being in the company of hundreds, who just like yourself, are on the cusp of love and fear and the great chaos of the unknown.

The past week of my life has felt like being enveloped in the kiss of a child. You know the ones gifted without warning or intention? Without hidden desire or the need for reciprocation there it is, embrace dressed up in the innocence of beauty and looking a whole lot like love.

To all of you that brought your hearts to the playa, raw and beaming as they were, thank you.

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