Two weeks, sixteen states, nine-thousand kilometers, a life changing experience later and we are home. Burning Man had a profound affect on us and we are both still trying to process all of the ways that it changed us. Fifty hours of driving home has given us plenty of time to think and talk, but I think it will take us weeks or even months more to fully realize everything we have been given.

If anyone has emailed us in the past few days and the email bounced, please try again. The email server went down for a few days, but it is fixed now. I would also like to apologize to everyone who has dropped by already to find that most of the pictures are not up yet. Wireless access was far too slow for uploading pictures toward the end of Burning Man and we didn’t find any Internet cafes in the mountains. The pictures will be up as soon as I post this though, so check again.

I have not put all of the pictures I took up, so if you are looking for a picture that I took of you, email us at burningman@prouse.org and describe it and I will see what I can find. If you see any pictures that you like in the photo gallery and would like to have a print made, email me and I will send you the high resolution version. Also, as you are browsing the pictures, there are three sizes of most pictures. Click on the thumbnails and an intermediate size picture will show up. Click on the medium picture and a larger one will appear. Also, if you want to leave a comment on any picture, click on the thumbnail for the picture and then under the larger pictures you will see a comments link. Click it and write your heart out.

Also, if I spelled anyone’s name wrong or worse just got it wrong (sorry, I am terrible with names) just write me and I will change the captions under the pictures.

Glenn has sent out a link to a great newspaper article about Burning Man. Check it out if you haven’t already, it is fun reading and remembering. Bill and Mary also posted an article from the Seatle Times which I have added to this post. If you would like to read it, click on the Continue reading “The Return To Society” link below and the full article will open.

Lastly, both of us want to thank all of our new friends, especially everyone at the VW Bus camp for making our experience so amazing. Bruce, a special thank-you for everthing you did to hold the camp together as a community. Without you, the VW Bus camp experience would have been very different.

Keep in touch everyone…

From Saturday’s paper, August 30, 2003:

Kindred free spirits bask in the glow of Burning Man

By Leslie Fulbright
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

BLACK ROCK CITY, Nev. – Mara Krieps rode to her wedding in a car resembling a big-toothed silver monster, wearing a long white faux mink cape, a silver halter dress and white vinyl boots. She held a fiber-optic bouquet as she walked down a dusty aisle to meet John Simmons, who awaited her at the Temple of Honor.

Strangers cleared a path for her, sang and recited poems and gave her gifts. There were about 300 people present in all, and most had never met the Seattle couple. Champagne flowed and cream puffs were passed around in the middle of this pristine desert.

This is Black Rock City, the temporary community created for the annual Burning Man cultural festival. It is a judgment-free zone, an art mecca. It is where Krieps, a project manager, and Simmons, an engineering consultant, dreamed of having their wedding.

“The community is the reason we are here,” said Krieps, standing on the deck of a school bus transformed into a Spanish galleon while a marching band played around her.

“This is the most warm and passionate and welcome place, and the only place we wanted to get married. Our creativity is not only accepted, it’s applauded.”

More on Burning Man

To follow festival happenings, see www.burningman.com

Black Rock City, about 100 miles east of Reno, opened its doors Monday and has since grown into a community of tens of thousands. San Francisco has the strongest showing of participants, but organizers say Seattle is likely second. Last year, more than 2,500 Seattleites came to Black Rock City, said David Peterman, the area’s regional contact.

The ritual burning of the 2003 festival’s namesake, which presides over the center of the camp, happens tonight.

Burning Man started in 1986 on a beach in the shadow of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, when a small group of friends gathered to burn an 8-foot wooden man, engaging, as the Burning Man Web site says, “in the first recorded form of what we now call ‘radical self-expression.’ ” That spontaneous act became the center of this cultural movement.

“People all over the beach rushed to witness the crude, human figure burning,” said Larry Harvey, one of Burning Man’s founders. “I was so moved by the kindness of the strangers. I resolved to do it again.”

After four years on the beach, the burners moved to Nevada and have remained here on the perfectly flat and very dry playa, a beachlike alkaline lake bed in the Black Rock Desert. In 18 years, the number of participants has grown from a dozen to more than 30,000. The man is now five stories high.

The Burning Man phenomenon doesn’t just happen but takes careful planning. Harvey says he is now organizing events in different regions of the world where Burners can gather more than once a year. He hopes the barter-based “gift economy” and values applied at Burning Man spread into other communities.

Commerce was formally banned at Burning Man in 1997. The only things for sale now are ice and coffee, and proceeds from those sales go to local schools, senior-citizen homes and charities.

The gift economy, Harvey said, allows people to contribute to the happiness of others. Gifts range from massages to pancake breakfasts, to cocktails to clothing boutiques to water – which is essential here.

Daytime highs on the playa, a desert oasis that looks like an ocean you can walk on, are between 90 and 110 degrees. It is so hot and dry that even cactus won’t grow.

At night, temperatures range from 30 to 50 degrees. There are occasional thunderstorms, and winds can reach up to 80 mph. The ubiquitous dust swirls around the playa and coats everything. Shoes and cars become completely covered; people wear dust masks and ski goggles to protect themselves.

Living in Black Rock City is a harsh test of endurance, but the weather is one of the things people love most about the city.

“Black Rock City juxtaposes the harshest physical environment with the lushest cultural environment,” said Eric Swenson, a 60-year-old Seattle writer. “My first year was especially profound. It provided many inspirations to dwell on weighty themes.”

It takes a village

This year’s theme, “Beyond Belief,” can be read literally; many sights here are beyond belief.

Far from freeways and superstores, the town is designed for pedestrians and bicycles. There is always a spectacle, and people are always riding around looking to jump in.

On the 360-degree arc of encampments, the man is at the center of the dial. So the camps are on streets with names like Sublime and Ridiculous, but are also represented by clock positions. The center camp, where coffee is sold, is at 6 o’clock and the others fan around it all the way to start at 2 o’clock and go to 10 o’clock.

People are everywhere and music is playing somewhere in the camp at all times. Many of the camps build elaborate kitchens and cook full meals, like grilled salmon with baby potatoes. There is an almost overwhelming amount of visual stimulation: lingerie parties, mobile tiki bars, fashion shows, yoga and tickle parties.

Many attendees say Burning Man has changed their lives, and yet have trouble articulating why.

Krieps and Simmons said they fell in love after watching a spectacular art car moment: a flying saucer chasing a lighthouse across the playa. Art cars – intensely decorated vehicles – are the only cars allowed in the city.

The two are also known by their Burning Man names, Margot and Sea Goat – names that they say are another way people here disconnect from their daily lives.

A 32-year-old calling himself Caillonius Maximus, for example, rode his bike to Burning Man from Seattle for the third time. It took him six days.

“I live to challenge myself and for curiosity,” he said. “My family here at Burning Man becomes closer year after year. It’s like a summer camp with a giant playground with 30,000 kids.”

Maximus is an artist who writes and illustrates. He said he would never have tapped into his art if it hadn’t been for Burning Man.

“My life was inspired and changed as an artist,” he said.

Weather shapes all

Burning Man is often characterized as a massive rave or drug binge. It can be for some people, but drug use is not overt. The weather makes it hard enough for some of the serious builders to do what they do. Drugs may make it impossible.

The Black Rock Desert is federal land, and the state and counties that border it send police to the event. Burning Man also has its own public-safety group called the Black Rock Rangers, community volunteers who try to prevent outside intervention. Many in the Department of Public Works, which sets up the site, stay here year-round.

Construction on the city, which began Aug. 1, used Global Positioning System coordinates to stake where the man would be. On Monday, participants took official residence. The man and his platform are built all week, and people and events always surround him. He glows neon blue at night.

There is a Burning Man radio station and the Black Rock Gazette newspaper; there is a Department of Mutant Vehicles that must register all art cars; you can get a registration sticker only if the DMV officials can’t tell what type of car you had before it was decorated. The cars become monsters, sailboats, fish and tropical bars. They slowly tool around the playa, occupants waving, dancing.

A woman from the Midwest hands out feta cheese. A professor stirs up a pitcher of chocolate drinks wearing a pink nightgown. People brew beer and serve paella. You can get a massage, find your soul mate, have your body painted or play in a fun house.

Clothing is optional, and a number of men and women go nude. Others wear wildly colored fur, hats, paint and pasties.

Flight to Mars, a Seattle group, created a theme camp based on an amusement-park ride that once sat where Experience Music Project is now. The group worked on re-creating the structure for eight months on a vacant lot in Duvall, then tore it down, loaded it into a semi and hauled it here. It took two days to set up, and finally premiered on Tuesday night.

The structure is walked through, like a fun house; there is a “spinning disk of death” where the people-powered floor spins. There are secret doors that split people up. There is an entire room full of colored balls.

“It is so complicated inside that it takes the average person an hour and a half to get through it,” said Perry Wales, who organized the construction. “Many people come back to take a second ride because it is just so fun.”

Flight to Mars is just one group in Area 47, a cluster of theme camps from Seattle including the Space Virgins, Camp DeNile and Playa Play Yard.

Camp DeNile has a nightly happy hour based on holidays. On “Easter,” they served chocolate bunny drinks and on “Mardi Gras,” they had hurricanes.

There is a Leave No Trace rule on the playa, which people take very seriously. People do not throw anything on the ground. Cigarette butts are put into mint tins. Camps have trash bins. Paper can be burned.

“You see strip-mall kids come who come from an elaborate vending society springing down the playa to pick up a plastic bag,” founder Harvey said.

After the citizens leave tomorrow and Monday, the Public Works Department scours the playa, using magnets to pull out stray nails and staples. They pick up melted glass and fabric by hand and screen the dust for debris. This takes weeks.

The face is wiped clean – and then they wait for it to happen again.

“There is nothing like thousands of people getting along, and then it’s over and everything is gone,” regional contact Peterman said. “That is the element I love witnessing.”

Leslie Fulbright: 206-515-5637 or lfulbright@seattletimes.com