At sunrise on Thursday morning, 30,000 citizens of Black Rock City gathered in a giant circle around a Burning Man art piece called “The Embrace” and waited for something to happen. The 70-foot wooden sculpture depicted the heads and shoulders of a man and a woman looking deep into each other’s eyes. As my campmates and I watched, flames began to spill out of the eye sockets. The fire crept across their skin of overlapping wooden slats, setting their scalps aflame before devouring the two heads completely.
Like the arms of a fiery god, twin currents of black smoke extended above the bystanders on the eastern perimeter, raining ash and cinders down upon their awestruck faces. The blazing figures merged into one giant colossus, spewing flames so dense they resembled molten lava. Tornadoes of dust and sparks were conjured into existence by the hellish temperatures and unleashed upon the desert plain. These whirling demons danced to their own apocalyptic tune before fragmenting amid the crowd.
Eventually, the flames died back and exposed the network of blackened neurons and connective tissue that had been lying beneath the wooden skin. This layer crumbled in turn, leaving behind a smoldering skeleton that was too structurally sound to collapse on its own. The attention of the crowd began to waver until a motorized crane rolled onto the scene. Against all common sense, the mischievous operator used the arm of the crane to ram the burning platforms until they wobbled and crashed to the ground, narrowly missing the vehicle. Thousands of exhausted citizens cheered.
Spectacles such as this are commonplace at Burning Man – a festival of imagination and unbridled self-expression. There is no place like it on earth. For just seven days, a dream city exists in the desert, full of gargantuan sculptures, mutated vehicles, and garishly costumed participants. For many, this event brings out their best, for it allows them the opportunity to live out their ideals of creativity and generosity. Others are unable to handle so much freedom; they fall prey to their vices, but usually survive to regret it.
For myself, this festival kick-starts the right side of my brain, inspiring me to rethink what might be possible to achieve in this world. It also makes me reconsider my own habits and personality. When you see 10 impossible things before breakfast, it helps to break down one’s preconceptions about society and self-identity. In the hot desert sun, the skin of the ego becomes dry and brittle. It slowly cracks and flakes off, and often what’s underneath is not much different than what existed before, though it is still fresh and revitalized. However, sometimes a butterfly emerges from that dusty cocoon, and ideas surface that have the potential to change humanity for the better.
But for the most part, people are looking to have a good time. Undoubtedly, this basic motivation guided the captain of our own mutant vehicle, the Pyrobar, to drive away from the ashes of “The Embrace” and join forces with a cluster of art cars that had circled their wagons in order to maximize their sound systems. A few hundred dancers were corralled within the perimeter, and several of our passengers drifted into the ecstatic crowd.
But we stayed too late. Slowly and steadily, the desert wind increased in force until the blowing dust escalated into white-out conditions. Visibility dropped to less than twenty feet. My compatriots and I wrapped scarves around our mouths and donned our goggles, while our driver slowly backed the Pyrobar away from the dance party. Time to return home.
Trying to determine direction on a flat, featureless plain during a dust storm, however, was no easy task, and it didn’t help that our entire crew was sleep-deprived from staying up the entire night. We proceeded at a crawl, with scouts walking ahead of the vehicle so that we wouldn’t run over any unconscious partiers that might be curled up on the playa. Art pieces such as giant crocodile heads and praying mantises served as landmarks to keep us on course until we rediscovered the tents, teepees and carports of our camp village on the edge of Black Rock City.
Wearily, we disembarked and shook our clothing. Everyone looked prematurely aged from the greyish dirt that coated their hair and accented the wrinkles at the corners of their tired eyes… everyone except Kitty, who had taken shelter beneath her sweater atop the Pyrobar for the duration of the storm. At Burning Man, those who failed to take care of their body and respect the harsh environment did so at their peril. Even experienced Burners such as myself could be hard pressed to keep our mental energies at optimum when the wind ripped at the earth and covered everything we ate or drank with alkaline dust.
Other sculptures were consigned to the flames on the nights that followed - temples, alien war machines and of course, the hundred-foot Man himself. It’s a lot for anybody to take in, so to help ground my experience, I had a fortune-teller give me a tarot reading on the final day of the festival. I already knew that big changes awaited me once I returned to Santa Barbara from my summer travels. I was finally moving on from the outdoor science school where I’d worked for eleven years, although I did not know my next job or destination.
Fools, magicians and lovers stood out among the pictures she laid on the table. The oracle took the Magician card to signify that I possessed lots of power and should not fear to utilize it. The Fool card, reversed, meant that I was afraid of becoming the fool and being perceived as such. Admittedly, because I was headed towards a period of unemployment, I felt a little foolish and self-conscious. And the times I’ve felt the most powerful lately have been while conjuring images via the written word, so I hoped to pursue writing more intensely in the months to come. Perhaps I’ll never be as powerful as the magicians responsible for the phantasmagorical creations I’ve seen at Burning Man, but I expect I’ll be able to cast a decent spell now and again.

Snyder is a 1991 Norwich High School graduate and author of "Off The Map: Fifty-five Adventures in the Great American Wilderness and Beyond,” available at Amazon.com.  For additional photos, visit www.facebook.com/offthemaponline.