Are you going to Burning Man?

Wow! What a change in the weather over the weekend. We went from record breaking highs last week to late Fall conditions in just a few days. I can't wait to see what this Winter will be like. Is it too early to start waxing the skis? The highs barely got out of the 40s and today will still be cool with a chance of scattered showers. It will warm back up by the middle of the week but the upcoming Labor Day weekend looks cooler again, although not as cool as what we just experienced. Be sure to check the forecast before you go camping or hiking. A great source for local weather is sierraweather.com

I'm sure most of you have heard of the Burning Man Festival. I've never been and only heard accounts and seen pictures of elaborate giant structures belching fire, bizarre costumes, naked bodies, and hedonistic partying in the middle of the Nevada desert. That's certainly enough to spark my interest so I decided to find out more. My days of hedonistic partying are long gone, so I probably won't be attending, but some of you may decide it's an experience not to miss after reading more about it. Burning Man is a festival held every year in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, about 100 miles north of Reno by the town of Gerlach, described by BurningMan.com as “dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance,”.  OK, that kind matches what I've heard. It's scheduled the week before and including Labor Day weekend, so this year the dates are Aug. 30 to Sept. 6. Tens of thousands of people will gather in the desert to create Block Rock City. There's a different theme each year and this year the theme is “Metropolis”. Festival participants try to find ways to represent the theme through large art exhibitions, theme camps, gifts brought for others, and costumes. In addition to art, the event features Mutant Vehicles, many of which are motorized, which are creatively altered cars or trucks. Be forewarned, the festival is clothing-optional and public nudity is fairly common, although not practiced by the majority.

The Burning Man event began as a bonfire ritual on the summer solstice in 1986 when Larry Harvey, Jerry James, and a few friends burned a 9-foot wooden man as well as a smaller wooden dog on Baker Beach in San Francisco. Even earlier, sculptor Mary Grauberger, a friend of Harvey's girlfriend Janet Lohr, held solstice bonfires on Baker Beach for years prior to 1986, some of which Harvey attended. When Mary stopped organizing the gatherings, Harvey took over. Harvey states that he did not see the movie "The Wicker Man", which features a large hollow wicker statue of a man burned at the end of the movie, until many years later. Stating that it didn't inspire him and rather than allowing "Wicker Man" to become the name of the ritual, he started using the name "Burning Man". In 1990, a separate event was organized by Kevin Evans and John Law in the dry lake known as Black Rock Desert. Meanwhile, the San Francisco event was stopped by the police for lack of a permit. Through a network of common friends and word of mouth, the San Fransisco effigy was transported to the Black Rock Desert and Burning Man and Black Rock City were merged. 

Black Rock City is arranged in a semi circle or C design, with the Man Sculpture and his supporting structure at the very center. The innermost street is named Esplanade, and the other streets are named based on the overall theme of the burn, and ordered in alphabetical order. The Black Rock City Airport is located next to the city and serves private airplanes, helicopters, hot air balloons, ultralights, gliders, and skydivers. The event has a "leave no trace" policy which includes removal of all trash, burning only on platforms (not on the desert floor), and even removal of all waste water by either packing it out or evaporation in plastic lined pools. The participants are transported to the event in shuttles originating in Reno and San Francisco and, during the event, from the nearby towns of Gerlach and Empire. The preferred form of transportation at the event is the mountain bike on the hard pack desert floor. If this sounds like a once in a lifetime experience you'd like to try you can get more information at www.burningman.com and see wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_man for more details and history.

If your idea of a wild time is doing a cannonball into the Olympic Village Inn pool and you decide Burning Man is not for you, here's another idea for something to do this week. The 22nd Annual Alpen Wine Festival takes place at Squaw Valley on Sept. 5 from 2pm to 5pm. It features wine tasting, live music and a silent auction and raffle. A $40 donation includes a Spiegalau crystal souvenir wine glass and tastings from over 40 Vineyards. It all benefits Can Do Multiple Sclerosis, a national nonprofit organization and innovative provider of lifestyle empowerment programs for people living with MS and their support partners. For more information go to www.squaw.com/22nd-annual-alpen-wine-festival. Burning Man is not for everyone, but it's a truly unique phenomenon of our time taking place close by that, at the very least, stimulates our interest and imagination. If you go, it promises to be something you'll remember for the rest of your life. If you decide it's not for you, you can lounge in the   spa, order one of those flaming drinks, and call it a night. Have a great week!