I always wanted to attend Burning Man

Over the years I’ve had friends tell me about their experiences on the mesa.

Burning Man is one of those things that is very unlike me. I’m a control freak (more or less). I like order instead of chaos, and I’m not someone who indulges in recreational drugs.

My friends descriptions of the Burning Man festival paint descriptions of a beautiful chaos. Some of my friends said flatly they spent the festival naked, high, and having sex at random with other people who were just as naked, high, and out of control.

Yes, this would seem to be something that is 180Β° counter to my nature. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always found the idea of attending the festival attractive. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to just completely let go.

What would it feel like to shed all the conditioning of society and embrace the wildness for a few days? Could I even do that, or are my controls locked down so tight I can’t be wild as the wind? In my youth I could easily shed society’s rules, my clothes, and inhibitions, now, I’m not so sure I could.

The art pieces that get assembled are often spectacular, I’ve been told that the pictures don’t do them justice because you lose the scale of the piece. I’d imagine they’re really spectacular if you’re seriously fucked up!

I’ve never been able to attend. In my 30s and 40s it was always about working and no matter how many months in advance I asked for vacation time, it was always denied.

I was shocked and surprised, while working at a military contracting company, when I asked for a week of vacation and it was granted.

That was literally the first time and perhaps the only time in my 40+ years of employment when I was granted my earned vacation time with no hassle or questions asked. I scrambled to secure all the reservations after the vacation approval. Since I’d always had vacation requests denied, I hadn’t pre-reserved my spot because some of the reservation was non-refundable.

I was leaving the country, so I had to notify the security folks. They were nice, they educated me about clearances and leaving the country. They hooked me up with a training class with about 20 other folks. Then off I went. Scuba Diving in a foreign country. It was great fun!

I think the military contractor might have raised their eyebrows if I’d gone to Burning Man. But probably not too much, as long as I didn’t come back to work on Tuesday morning still loaded.

Burning Man has always seemed to me to be an opportunity to step into a Mad Max movie. Generally speaking that’s not something I’d do without being heavily armed. Burning Man might be thought of as Mad Max without the gunfire.

One friend suggested that with my skin type, I’d probably need to build a suit out of a space blanket, or perhaps a still-suit from Dune. He laughingly said that he didn’t think there was enough sunscreen on the planet to protect me from being fried. He did point out that the space blanket suit could be a sellable item, or at least a great art piece.

This led me to rethink going to Burning Man. After all it’s the art piece that is supposed to burn, not the overly fair skinned attendees.

I thought perhaps I could enjoy the festival by adopting a Vampire schedule. But being in a tent on a desert mesa trying to sleep during the day would be problematic.

If I had to run around all day long in a reflective encounter suit like I was on another planet, and couldn’t enjoy dancing naked in the sun with the other festival goers then what was the point?


I briefly considered going to Burning Man this year.

2023 has been a rough year and mentally checking out for four or five days sounded attractive. There wasn’t enough time and a few too many moving pieces to allow me to go, once I thought of it.

How much SPF Ten Billion could I lay my hands on, was one hurdle. I’ve seen photos of people dressed literally in mud. That would work as long as the mud wasn’t flaking off every 2 minutes.

As luck would have it, had I gone this year I’d have had an abundance of mud. I just read there were 73,000 campers are stranded on the mesa due to heavy rain that has turned the desert into mud. Apparently officials are telling campers to conserve food and water because it’s going to take some time for the area to be dry enough to be navigable.

I’m glad I didn’t go.

It’s one thing to tic something off your bucket list and have fun doing it. It’s quite another to want to tick something off the bucket list and be totally miserable doing it.

Besides I’d have been alone, and I’d have had muddy equipment, a muddy me, and a muddy dog to pack into my muddy vehicle. I’d have “Burning Man Mud” in my vehicle forever.

Experiences are supposed to change and enhance you. But I don’t want to be reminded of an experience, (good or bad) every time I drive somewhere.

Maybe next year…

A Good Day

I did the usual chores, played a video game or two, watched Foundation on Apple TV. Then I made dinner, went out to the deck to eat and watched the sunset.

The moon rose gently over the mountain then hung behind the trees at the top of the ridge for a few minutes.

It was one of the perfect photographic shots that you miss because your phone is inside and probably won’t catch the image. You think for a minute and realize that by the time you grab the SLR, the moon will have moved on and the shot will be gone.

So you do the only rational thing.

You sit still, take another drink of your adult cocktail and enjoy the the moon moving up behind the treeline ascending to its proper place in the heavens. You store the image in your head, just like your ancestors did for the preceding million years.

That was my evening.


When I came in and was cleaning up the kitchen the pup came in and had some swelling above one eye. I think he took a wasp hit or was bitten by something while we were out walking. He sticks his head in bushes sometimes so it’s possible he ticked off a wasp or bee.

He came to show me. I’ve washed his face with a cool damp rag, I cuddled him next to me on the couch for a while. As expected, the area is a bit sensitive but the cool rag seemed to sooth it.

I’ll have to keep an eye on it. If the swelling is gone or reduced by morning it’ll be fine otherwise I may have to take him to see the vet.

It’s a clean new morning!

A certain someone woke me as soon as he figured out the rain had stopped.

I have to admire the way the dog resets every day. He makes me smile more than most other things, so I’ll keep him around for now.

For those of you still below the grey cloud cover, here’s a sample of what you have to look forward to, later today.

The morning smells clean and fresh. The dog is beside himself exploring the yard. He’s already pushing for a walk, which he’ll get after I’ve had at least one cup of coffee…

I’m not sure if the trash folks are coming up today or not. I don’t know how crazy things are beyond what I can see.

I never lost power, or was inconvenienced in the least by the storm. I got to stay inside most of the day enjoying a movie or two, the dog cuddled up beside me with the sound of rain on the roof and the wash behind the house roaring away.

It looks like there’s some kind of inspection crew down at the bridge, I can see the lights but not what they’re doing. I guess I need a decent pair of binoculars at the very least.

I’ve been waiting for a pair that were all “techie” range finder, night vision, predator weapon interface. You know, loaded with SciFi shit like you see in the movies. You’d think by now someone would have put something like that together! 😁

I wanted to see if the smiley face would work. Don’t expect me to start communicating in modern hieroglyphics but I wanted to test it as an option.

It doesn’t look like there’s a lot to clean up immediately around the house. I’ll wander out in a bit to do an inspection just to make sure. I don’t believe there’s any damage either so I don’t have to deal with insurance claims or FEMA.

As you may have noticed I’ve posted some video in the past day or two. Yesterday it was because I was bored, and a video shot on my phone was not to my liking. I set about cleaning it up and learned more about editing video. I’ll never be a pro at it but it’s interesting to dabble with.

The reason I shot the video in the first place was to send to my neighbor who is helping out a sick loved one in Palm Springs and was curious about his house and the neighborhood. I suspect that he’s dealing with a number of messes out there which are more severe than what happened here.

Once I’d exhausted my patience with video stuff, I spent the rest of the day answering inquiries from family on the East Coast who had watched too much CNN. From the way they were talking I imagined CNN was saying that the end of days was here and it was starting in California?

Anyway after quieting their concerns and reminding them all that an 8000 Ft mountain stood between me and the storm, they lapsed back to normal anxiety levels. I’m so confident about my mountain I dare a CAT 5 hurricane to hit it directly!

Bring it! Mother Nature.

Seriously, most storms that come in from the South are gutted on the peaks of the mountains. I live in their shadow, the upside is those storms I don’t usually worry about too much, the down side is that in winter it’s dark at my house by 3pm.

The only storms I really worry about are those swirling storms that come in from the North. Those are usually bitterly cold and batter the town for days on end.

Those of you who were impacted by the storm, I hope you fared at least as well as I did. Remember things are still gooey in some places. So pay attention and don’t take any chances with mud or innocent puddles across the roads.

Have a good day


I just found out that part of my little town is cut off due to some roads and bridges being washed out. This doesn’t affect me per se because I don’t need to go anywhere today or probably tomorrow. When I secured the place due to the unknowns of the storm, I secured to stay in place for days… Even a week or two if necessary.

I find that having laid in supplies, having a plan, and not having to go anywhere tends to make me a whole lot calmer about this sort of thing.