Its hard to sum up Burning Man. Heres some pictures to give you an idea.
The Duck Art Car
The Temple, credit Scott London
Bunnies Unite, credit Scott London
American Dream, credit Curious Josh
Phone Car, Credit Curious Josh
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TrackbackTake 50,000 people
Place them in the Nevada Desert. Ban money and commercialism. Social status is checked at the gate. Allow freedom of expression and an environment where radical self reliance is key.
This is Burning Man. A community of people from predominately developed countries adopting a community spirit I’ve seen only in developing countries. Where you look out for your camp mates, neighbours, strangers.
Its a leave no trace event. By the end of cleanup you shouldn’t be able to tell there was a city there for over a week.
Thats like relocating the entire population of New Plymouth, (NZs 12th Biggest city!) into the desert.
24 hours a day for an entire week those 50,000 people do whatever they want, learn, explore, party, share and grow.
It starts before you even get there. Months of planning, teaming up with other people to form a camp. Planning actually starts for most camps as soon as they are home from the previous burn.
The drive in, slow, the dust enveloping you, your car, everything.
You get to the gate, its around 3am. A dust storm is in full force and the greeters run up to your car, welcoming you home. You cant help but get this strange feeling in your chest that you are somewhere special.
They ask if we are virgins, we are taken over to bells at the entrance and told to ring out or virginity.
It begins.
Comments rss TrackbackWhile I was in Belize, I adopted Baby. It seems quite a popular thing to do these days. She didn’t seem to have a home, even less a body. So I picked her up and brought her along for the ride. Shes disadvantaged since one of her eyes can be a bit wonky, so tends to weird people out a little.
Baby watching the world go by
Baby even has her own space in my pack, with a grand view of the world poking her head out from the top of my pack. She seems to spook some people as I walk past, or the luggage loaders on buses and boats when they glance down and see her staring up at them. Sometimes you’ll hear their conversations stop mid sentence, others exclaim and laugh. Its great fun, and generally promotes interaction and and great deal of laughter.
She even keeps an eye on those who have fallen asleep in public places.
This is all leading up to the most interesting encounter Baby has had to date.
We had one guy in my dorm, who after a couple of days said to the others in the room that he couldn’t take it any more, and put a shirt over baby as she was just laying there in my pack.
A day or so later he was talking to the girls in the room wide eyed and says.
“You know that guy with the Baby.. You know that paddling pool is also his?”
“Do you think he bathes the Baby in the Pool?”
Brilliant Idea! Unfortunately I left the next morning so wasn’t able to Bathe baby…
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