Burning Man

Stuart Mangrum paints a picture of being on the Black Rock Desert in northwest Nevada. "Heat waves shimmer off the hardpan alkali flat, and a fine white dust swirls on the wind. Thunderheads gather over the distant mountains that ring the plain, but the sky above you is a deep, cloudless blue. Behind you is your camp, a Rube Goldberg mix of vans, tents, and RVs arranged in a great circle."

In 1995, the playa gathering was only 5 years old, in the first period of the Burn, after its birth as a San Francisco beach gathering in 1986. Here's a documentary of someone's largely uninformed visit in '95, when they planned for a one-night rave, but ended up surviving for a week on the kindness of some of the 4,000 other people there:

Burning Man 1995 from Ammon Haggerty on Vimeo.

By 1996, the event had grown to 8,000 attendees and unrestricted driving on the open playa was becoming a major safety hazard, so the gathering moved slightly, and the organizers added new restrictions and structure to what was first conceived as a dadaist temporary autonomous zone with sculpture to be burned and situationist performance art. But those changes have allowed the grow in size, with the video below of when the gathering surpassed 70,000 attendees.

Burning Man 2018 - aerial view - 4k from Philippe Meicler on Vimeo.

The organizers help create a whole city that exists for a week, only to erase their presence and leave no trace. (Disregarding the fact that having tens of thousands of people travel to one central location from all over the world means a lot of emissions, effectively doubling the annual average for personal emissions.) Back to the Handbook and 1995:

Burning Man is one of the last places on earth where people from all walks of life, all social strata. and all points of the compass can come together and share an extraordinary experience a very primal experience: surviving as a group in a challenging environment. creating a temporary culture or their own design, and sharing one of the most elemental experiences of our species, the awesome mystery of fire.

Oh yeah and it's also one hell of a party.

How is it decades later? It's a lot easier to know what you're getting into. HMHB included not a website URL, but a phone number to call. Now we can watch videos, read plenty of newbie guides so you know how to prepare.

And it's still a party. But inclusive? Not in the same way. Elon Musk Is Right, Burning Man Is Silicon Valley. The wealthy literally jet in, flying on private aircraft, getting chauffeured to an exclusive cluster in Black Rock City, adjacent to the naked hippies, but in air conditioned tents, eating fresh lobster, instead of communal living in the desert.

The original Burning Man has spun off regional events around the world, so if you want that burner experience with less of the brogrammer nonsense and decrease your emissions, find a local group. Or better yet, make your own event wherever you are.

Parting note: for 2020, Burning Man won't be a physical event, but instead a virtual experience. Maybe this is the chance for a real low-emissions, all-access event?