It’s tricky to explain what happens when 60,000 beautiful freaks converge in the Black Rock Desert, and it’s a different ride for every last one of them.  After my seventh year, I suppose I should say “us.” So instead of trying to sum it all up, here are just a few of my own experiences this year.

Houston’s CORE project ReinCOWnation rising out of the dust.

For the last two years I’ve volunteered with the Art Department; taking artists to the site where they can finally install the work that has been waiting, sometimes for years, to meet the dust. Along the way I chat them up about their work, their hometown, their first Burning Man, and often much more. Eating dust in a golf cart through the heat of the day is fun when playing a small role in the art that populates that magical place, while picking up the stories behind the work.

La Llorona shipwrecked off of Pier 2.

Another highlight of this year was Black Rock Spatial Delivery’s Virgin Letters Project; which was great fun and gave us an excuse to surprise fellow participants with often beautiful theater. They laughed, they cried, they looked embarrassed and wondered how we could tell this might just be their first time.

Also, the camp was kind enough to allow me to graphically represent them yet again this year – the above being a mash up of BRSD’s traditional “biking man” and this year’s theme of fertility.