This Year No One Goes Home

Burning Man 2020 has been canceled

After dithering for about a month too long, the Burning Man Organization (the B’org) finally and wisely decided against holding the event for the first time since 1986 because of our friend, the virus. That’s one hell of a run. Thirty-four years of managing the increasingly complex task of building a temporary city in a hostile environment for some of the biggest flakes on the planet is quite a feat. This would have been my eighth Burn and AleXander’s fourteenth. Or, as Burners have it, we’d be going home.

I have a complicated relationship with That Thing in the Desert, Burning Man.

My first time out was in 2011, the year that the event sold out for the first time, and for many long-time Burners that was the death knell of the “real” Burning Man (there have been many).

I was not one of those having a Come To Jesus moment my first time out to Burning Man. In fact, I seem to recall journaling that I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to go back. The five-hour wait to get into the event that first time clued me in that I may have been in over my head. I was cranky, hot, dusty, hungry, and exhausted by the time we got to the Greeters’ Station (“where the party starts”). I did not roll around in the dust but I did hit their big gong and get a cheer. Yeah, fine, whatever. Now, what?

Burning Man made an enormous impact on AleXander when he first went in 2005 and he still gets the world’s biggest thrill out of standing on the Esplanade at sunset, watching the city spring to bizarre and indescribable life.

I’ve always wished it was more meaningful to me.

The thing about Burning Man is that’s it’s not a party or a concert or an art event or a camping trip or a rave or a fun time with friends. It can be all that at moments but it’s also debilitatingly hot, dusty or muddy depending on the precipitation situation, inconvenient AF, exhausting, confusing, too loud, too cold at night, and just an all-around test of endurance. The simplest things, like putting on your boots, for example, become complicated and take an inordinate amount of time.

Most people are awesome as the harshness of the environment can bring out the best in some. But that clearly doesn’t include the pinhead peeing against the shade structure one afternoon. Or the idiot who left his (yes, I am totally gender profiling here) empty beer can in my bike basket. And let’s talk about the off-the-charts nasty vandalism of the porta-potties.

On second thought, let’s not.

Yet, I went back the next year. And the next. And the next!

In 2014, I broke one of the main struts of the tent as we struck camp and we took it as a sign from the gods. We didn’t go in 2015 or 2016.

By this point, the influx and prevalence of the 1% from Silicon Valley were becoming even more in-your-face and obnoxious. These obscenely wealthy privilege-ites send out staff to build their compounds of circled deluxe RVs, fly in to spend a couple of days sashaying about in their Instagram-ready costumes on their Segways that have been decorated by their staff and then fly back out. Are they pointing and laughing at the world’s biggest traffic jam, aka Exodus, where the 99% are sitting for up to eight hours trying to get out of the event? I say yes.

But I made the mistake in 2016 of convincing AleXander to watch the Man burn on the live streaming feed that’s now part of the event. That was it; we were going back.

All our gear had been donated to other Burners during our hiatus so in 2017 we started from the ground up. New tent, dishes, sleeping bags, folding chairs, coolers, blankets, lanterns, pillows, towels, shower bags, and a futon to replace the insanely unstable and uncomfortable air mattress. We also needed bikes and AleXander did an awesome job researching bike shops in Sacramento, our staging area for the endeavor. We can’t recommend John B. at Natomas Bike Shop highly enough (not an affiliated link).

I switched from a bike to an adult trike and John hooked AleXander up with a really sweet mountain bike. He gave us great service, excellent prices and a wonderful deal on storage and maintenance of the bikes after the event. And we got him out to his first Burn in 2018.

Awesome all the way around.

So, yes, we returned to our Burner ways for 2017, 2018, and 2019. In those years we had multiple days hitting over 102 degrees during the day. I had my first bout of semi-serious dehydration (one gets so sick of dealing with those unspeakable porta-potties that one does foolish things like not drinking enough water; this one anyway). We had a couple of serious dust storms with wind high enough to compromise the large shade structure’s structure. My trike proved to be a wonderful move as I now had full stability and a handy large basket for carrying ice back from Arctica not to mention providing a comfortable(ish) seat wherever we happened to be. The futon, likewise, was an enormous improvement over that leaking air mattress.

And, still, I remained ambivalent about the whole thing. In fact, two years ago right around this time, I made the foolhardy mistake of suggesting to AleXander that it might not make great sense for me to consider taking time off for two major trips (Spain and Portugal in May and Burning Man in August)having just started a new job. That didn’t go over well.

I came to my senses and wound up having a great Burn complete with a night of dancing myself senseless at Planet Earth’s New Order vs Depeche Mode dance party (I feel sorry for you if you’ve missed that).

Am I turning cartwheels now that it’s been canceled?

Not really.

In fact, last night we watched this new Burning Man music video and I found myself tearing up a little. I’ve never been a Burn Forever person. I’ve always approached the whole thing with a wild pendulum swing from dread to exhilaration. And back to dread.

But watching this video, seeing old clips from Baker Beach and from the early years out on the Black Rock Desert, then seeing clips from many of the years I was there, did something I wasn’t expecting.

It made me deeply sad that this strange, ungovernable, wild flapping thing may be over.

There have been murmurings about new conditions being demanded by The Bureau of Land Management and it’s quite possible that the event has run its course. The surrounding towns and cities in that part of Nevada have long had their own complicated feelings around Burning Man. The tiny town of Gerlach has become an annex of the B’org’s main office in San Francisco and many people in Pershing County are suspicious of those drugged-out hippies that clog all the main roads at the end of every summer. Then again, those drugged-out hippies drop a ton of money in Reno and surrounding towns every August and that will be missed.

There are, of course, the regionals that take place all over the world and draw many Burners and people who wish they had the scratch to make the big trip. If that’s your cuppa, I support you but see those as basically camping trips with a Burning Man theme.

Burning Man itself is one of a kind. There is nothing even remotely like it.

There is the austere and vast beauty of the playa which, although called a desert, is really the alkaline lake bed of long-gone Pleistocene Lake Lahontan. It’s like being on another planet especially at sunrise. Zero life to be seen in any direction unless you look back at the city. Absolute flat white surface stretching out to sharply etched, tree-less mountains in the distance. Other-worldly.

At this point in any other year, there would be thousands of crazy dreamers coming up with the most outlandish and wild installations. There would be planning meetings and fundraisers and building parties.

For decades the cycle repeated itself, starting with the driving of the Gold Spike in late summer that would mark where the Man would stand. Over time, the great machine gathered itself and threw down a grid, a huge center camp, infrastructure, a city in the desert. Hundreds of thousands of people would vie for the coveted 70,000 tickets and in late August the great migration toward “Home” would begin. People from every continent (yes except Antarctica, Susan) would start boarding planes, renting RVs, getting old school buses tuned up and packed and ready to go.

We already had our tickets (which will be refunded, btw) and had begun throwing ideas around about a new art collaboration. For years, AleXander would create a huge photomontage that adhered somewhat to the theme of the year and I’d write a story. We’d have the story printed up and would spend days collating, folding, and stapling those little books together (links to the stories below). This year, we felt like it was time for something new.

Here’s something new: No Burning Man.

I’m incredibly lucky to have gotten to experience this amazing and inexplicable event. For that, I thank my partner, AleXander. Not only did he do all the heavy lifting and organizing, he never let my ambivalence stand in the way of him having the time of his life out there. And his joy proved to be infectious. How could I not fall into the mad swirl of color, fire, art, music, joy, awe, creativity, light, and movement standing next to him?

There are so many friends we’ll badly miss seeing. People who are more like family but who we only see this one time a year (usually). They know who they are. Wiping away a tear.

So the woman who never really wanted to go back out to that hot, dusty, difficult place is really going to miss going to that hot, dusty, difficult place.

Be kind.

And if you missed it, I’m so sorry!

© Remington Write 2020. All Rights Reserved.