“Big dust storm comin’!” announced a burly ranger, who seemed to appear out of nowhere. “Best be getting back to your tents… batten down the hatches.” I glanced at my friends, gave a nod, and we wove our way back through the crowds to where our bikes were parked. Recalling the ferocity of yesterday’s storm, we hurriedly pedaled away from the iconic wooden figure of the forty-foot, triangle-headed Man, back across the playa to our encampment. A wall of grayish-brown wind surged through the southern streets of Black Rock City, and I hoped we would make it home in time before the dust made it impossible to navigate.
Storms like these certainly made life in the Black Rock Desert a challenge, but it would be hard to picture the week-long Burning Man Festival without them. 50,000 people had gathered from across the world to build a temporary city on a flat, lifeless expanse of hardpan clay in northwest Nevada - the second-largest flat region in the Northern Hemisphere. Domed nightclubs sat empty at the edges of the playa, waiting for nightfall. Giant sculptures of steel and wood littered the open spaces, ringed by a colorful expanse of flags, pavilions, tents and RVs. And in the center of it all stood the Man atop his spindly wooden pyre.
Twenty-one years ago, the first Burning Man was torched on a beach in California in front of 20 people, and since then it has grown into a monstrous artistic event and an ongoing experiment in community-building. Nothing may be bought or sold at the Festival… only bartered or given away. While walking around the streets of the city, people are continually calling you into their encampment to enjoy free lemonade, snow cones, lollipops, smoothies, foot massages or a good, stiff drink. And the camps themselves have themes, with structures designed to look like Irish pubs, western saloons, gypsy wagons or even the hallowed halls of Monticello. I would often express my gratitude for a cold refreshment by playing flute music to my generous hosts.
Any attempt to describe the Festival is doomed to fall short of the experience, which resides somewhere at the crossroads between a vaudeville revue and Woodstock. To walk through the city is to explore the manifested desires of everyone who ever wanted to run away and join the circus. Fire-twirlers and jugglers are everywhere, and everyone is garbed in the most outlandish costumes that thrift stores and sewing machines could provide… or wearing nothing but body paint, which is often more practical in the heat of the desert afternoon.
There was little time to enjoy the scenery as we raced back to our street, and thankfully my free community bike didn’t throw its chain along the way. Wearing goggles and dust masks, we struggled to lash another tarp onto my friends’ wooden shelter, then hunkered down inside as the winds shook the walls and steadily coated every surface with a layer of fine-grained silt. I had wrapped my own tent with clear plastic to keep out the dust, with a ventilation pipe added so I wouldn’t run out of oxygen overnight.
The white-out conditions made it impossible to see one side of the street from the other, and everyone’s hair soon turned gray from all the wind-blown powder. At last, a few drops of rain came down, and as the wind died, people began emerging from their tents and shelters to congratulate each other for outlasting another storm. This time, though, a curtain of distant rainfall allowed the sun to cast a sparkling double rainbow above the center of the playa. People climbed atop their RVs to dance and shout at the brilliant display, which was vibrant enough to feature an extra band of indigo and green along the lower edge of the primary rainbow.
Amid this festive atmosphere, I prepared fresh bread on my camping stove and passed some around to my neighbors. But I dashed away from a pot of boiling soup when I saw the water truck come rumbling by. It was spraying jets of water to decrease dust on the roads of Black Rock City while simultaneously providing a free shower to a laughing throng of naked followers. I ran into their midst and let the torrent of water rinse my body of three days of accumulated dust. When I returned to camp, dripping, my hair was back to its normal shade of dark brown, and I felt like a new man.
The following evening, the entire city gathered in a ring around the forty-foot effigy in the center of the playa, waiting impatiently for the climactic event of the weekend. A kilted Scotsman opened the fire-twirling performances, with a jet of flame spurting out of his bagpipes as he played to the crowd. At last, the Burning Man was set aflame, and the incredible amount of heat emitted by the inferno spawned a series of smoke tornadoes, which undulated, serpent-like, as they danced away and dissipated among the fire-spinners.
The wind shifted, and hot ashes rained down on our heads for a time. Through dusty goggles, I watched as the Man finally collapsed, sending a shower of sparks high into the dark, summer sky. The ring of people suddenly transformed into a screaming horde, rushing forward to glory in the apocalyptic spectacle.
In this surreal environment, experiences must simply be breathed in, and breathed out, as preconceived modes of thinking about human behavior are thrown into the fire and consumed. If there were Seven Cultural Wonders of the World, the Burning Man Festival would have an indisputable place among them. And after five days in Black Rock City, I still felt I had a lot to assimilate before I could even think about taking on the other six.

Bryan is a 1991 Norwich High School graduate and works as a naturalist at the Rancho Alegre Outdoor School in Santa Barbara, CA. You may reach him mid-journey at foolsby@hotmail.com.