The official burning man page is at www.burningman.com. Dan Lyke at Flutterby has mentioned that there are three stages of attendance at Burning Man in successive years (paraphrasing): Initial euphoria that such a community could exist anywhere; the next year, a growing realization of the flaws in the event, and finally the third year, the crisis: the flaws become unbearable, or the participant becomes integrated into the community. I am curious to know where you, gentle readers, are along this spectrum.
For myself, this was my third year and I feel relatively integrated; I get a lot of joy from being part of the loose Burning Man community through email and the Web, and trying to figure out how to change things in the other reality outside the playa.
Stars, a laser, and my rickshaw; and of course the snow fence, which I couldn't see when I took this 12 minute exposure. This does answer the question "what color is the sky when it's dark?" ; it's a tad greenish, due to ionized oxygen in the airglow layer, I think.
One day in '98 I returned to camp to find someone looking for me:
He: Are you Mr. X?
Me: No, I'm Mr. Science.
He: Well, Mr. X was just here, (indicating our camp) and he said he'd give me some X...
This brought to mind several possibilities: (a) total strangers were dispensing drugs from our camp in our absense; and (b) He had chemically rendered himself incapable of discerning his location.
I'd go for (b).
mail:
mrscienc at southwind dot net