Free to Be Burners

I’ve written numerous posts on this blog listing reasons we love Burning Man and feel others our age will love it as well. Those reasons have included the creativity, the diversity of people, the whimsy, and the eroticism that are hallmarks of the event. But one factor I’ve never mentioned – possibly because I didn’t notice its presence until this Burn — is freedom. This year, arriving as we did to a raw and unstructured Playa, it was clear the moment we stepped out of our RV that we were unencumbered by our day-to-day lives. We felt totally free – untethered to anything outside of the next two weeks. The feeling of weightlessness was palpable, and energizing. Here we were, parked in an empty plot of desert with practically no one in sight, and feeling totally fine with our situation. It was exhilarating.

We may have noticed this sense of freedom, this absence of pedestrian constraints, because we had been away from Burning Man for two years; hence, 2017 felt a bit like our first Burn. But because we were experienced Burners, we weren’t overwhelmed as are most first-timers; we were instead aware of our deeper feelings. In the nothingness we encountered arriving this year, we found liberation.

Tent-top light show underway in Deep Playa

This lightness of spirit permeated our entire experience and left us at ease in the face of challenges such as leading a camp for the first time and dealing with the typical harsh elements of Black Rock City. It also allowed us to revel with abandon in the joys we’ve always found at Burning Man. I remember watching a deep playa light show, transfixed at the movement of the LED’s synched to mostly classical music. Burners laid on the floor of the tent-like structure watching the light show projected onto the “roof”. You felt like you could watch forever.

That same night we saw a gigantic puppet created by a French artist. I had seen her before, but she was attired so differently that I thought this was a second such art installation. It turned out that the artist’s crew changed the puppet’s look daily – quite an undertaking for a figure that was probably 25 feet tall.

Giant puppet in open Playa. Her outfits changed daily

The art not only inspired us with its beauty, creative effort, and remarkable desert-ready execution, but also spoke to the sense of freedom in which we basked the entire time.

weather largely cooperated in giving us leeway to set our own schedule. In fact, this year’s greatest meteorological challenge was not dust storms, but heat. The temperature reached at least 119 degrees and confined us to our air-conditioned RV between 11 and 4 most days. The nights cooled, but not as much as usual. As a result, our lighted outerwear was too warm for the balmy desert evenings – even at the 4,000-foot elevation of the Black Rock Desert – and remained back in the RV or hung on our bikes. Desert weather is fickle and I would recommend bringing warm clothes for the evenings despite this year’s warmth. I also think we made the right decision staying out of the heat during the hottest part of the day. Some of our young campmates were fine taking on mid-day activities, but I’m certain it would have sapped our strength.

But even the heat could not dampen our sense of liberty at being at Burning Man. It was, without a doubt, our best – and freest – burn ever.