Wednesday the weather again gathered itself for an assault on the region, with much of the sky cloudy that windy early evening.

 The night time existence of the city is well established by mid week, each night noticeably more intense and already comparable to the peak intensity of earlier years. The distant blue Man is visible along each of the radial streets, inviting one to venture out into the darkness. I wander through part of the inner 'Esplanade' road, enjoying the moving and stationary wonders pulsing in their colorful lights. heading out into the dark central zone on the way to the Man, one soon is treated to the spectacle of this flashing thundering thing, something remarkable to behold, impressive in its sheer size. The dust brings a delicate 'fairyland' glow to night time Black Rock City.

 It is a beautiful glowing wonderland, and as grand as everything is out there one repeatedly comes back to the central figure of light to bask in its cool blue electric glow. The light of the Man reaches hundreds of feet into the surrounding flat playa, becming a major gathering site. Many bicycles are laid down as people come and go, and in the distance the sparkling jewel necklace of the tent city wraps itself around the horizon. A distant series of vertical spotlights marks the Center Camp tent at the head of the main processional route, and moving lights gradually turn into bizarre shapes of art cars as they approach. Heading down from the top I wander around the mid-level walkway, and around the corner up there a wedding is taking place...turning back at the next corner I meet a dignified whiskered man dressed in a fine wizard costume with a tall peaked hat. "Ah, one wizard greets another!" he knowingly intones, for I am wearing my own conical cosmic wizard hat painted to suggest the history of the universe. We bow to each other and move on.

 By Thursday I began feeling it was time to make sure certain things were seen, setting out determined to make even more of this day than the last. This year I did not bring my radio-cassette recorder. I had been doing so previously but tired of the added hassle. It was just as well for I heard but a single station on the air when I checked a couple days into the event. Later claims were made that all stations were shut down for much of the event except for the 'official' Burning man information radio at reduced power due to an FCC directive. I was not terribly faithful in getting all issues of the local papers, and I gathered little of a sense of an overview in all honesty, but what I saw of the moods of those around me was quite positive, many expressing how blown away they were.
Center Camp was always the thriving central gathering place, and several times I enjoyed some cool chai tea or lemonade there. Much of the interior of this spacious tent was a kind of huge shaded 'refuge' where people lay sprawled on couches, curled up in corners, and sitting in small groups while others constantly wandered in and out. Music played from a stage on one side, poetry was read from another, and in the open center section dancing usually took place. The bulletin board where many a message was posted and buried under others was near an entrance, and nearby people occasionally handed out literature, including the creatively scurrilous 9/11-Bush administration maligning 'Deception Dollar' The center of the tent was open to the sky, where flags fluttered at the inner edge by day and a series of strong searchlights beamed up by night.

 Just outside the tent hundreds of bicycles were laid down looking like a flood had left them there. Nearby along the little circular street surrounding 'Center Camp' was the 'downtown' district, complete with an official Post Office and various established institutions such as Media Mecca, the Black Rock Gazette, and others. It was here the bicycle and foot traffic was always densest, where one was treated to the sight of many people being 'downtown' in this wacky improvised city.
 I tried to cover a lot of ground, walking nearly 30 miles during that week, always on the lookout for man made and natural wonders. I alternated between enjoying isolation and camaraderie, between becoming part of the flow of experience and seeking some kind of overview of it all. A bike would have greatly helped, and next year I will probably have one available. I did manage to repeatedly walk around the entire inner circular 'esplanade' street which largely encloses the art strewn 'empty zone', and to venture out to a few of the outer peripheral regions which contained their own wonders.

 Among the repeat attractions from last year was the magnificent wooden galleon sailing ship built around a school bus. I entered its rear hatch and climbed up past the varnished wood interior bunks, to end up standing on the deck admiring a commanding view of the Playa.

 A small 'booth' I came upon later out in the playa held three spherical mirrors in a triangular setting, so from the outside one could see the weather and the surroundings wrapping around a 'fisheye' view. Inside the 'booth' one was treated to a multiple infinity picture of fisheye views reflecting surrounding subdivided fisheye views.

 An actual phone booth set up in the Playa had a telephone connection to someone claiming to be God!
While walking in and out of the camp I generally used the radial '8:30' street 'Imagine' because of the bathrooms were on the way out. I should add that there were lines to use the porta-potties but never with very long waits, and they were kept in surprisingly good shape except for the plastering of literature and graffiti.

 Pinkeys became one of the major party centers of the entire Playa, however in the end they occupied only the land they needed. They were in my book a great bunch of guys. The noise level from 'Pinkeys' was never quite too loud for me at night but perhaps that is merely a testament to the width of those outer arc shaped city 'blocks'. At least once they were made to shut down their sound system by BRC Rangers due to complaints of nearby residents who wanted to sleep, but they churned on at reduced decibels and even periodically became a ghost town. Once I walked by and came upon some people who had agreed to meet at Pinkey's, both finding the elaborate dance stage and bar dark and silent like a weird movie set on a back lot at night.

 While wandering through the event during its long plateau of maximum energy later in the week I searched for words to sum up what I saw expressed there. 'Celebration' seemed a constant theme to me, 'Creativity' would be another, also 'drumming' as it was constant as was 'dance club' music at night although many local varieties of audio were also available. 'Satire' or 'humor' comes to mind as a lot of the art objects would give a laugh upon discovery then kind of become part of the bizarre backdrop of odd shaped things always passing by.
'Psychedelic' would be another theme, with mushrooms and other visual hallucinatory references seen in a large percentage of camp decoration. On the latter point it is worth emphasizing the look is not that of a nostalgic 1960's revival, but of a variety of fresh methods of expression impossible nearly 40 years ago. Significantly, Merry Prankster Carolyn Garcia AKA 'Mountain Girl' gave an interview to the Black Rock Gazette, in which she said "My joy at coming to Burning Man was about rediscovering the energy field we created at the Acid Tests. I'd forgotten how it felt and had thought that feeling had passed from view, with the new millennium and all. The Acid Tests were the precursors to Burning Man." This was her third burn.
Wall posters and colored liquid projection light shows have given way to glow-light sculptures and video projections on huge white domes. One should note that you also hardly ever saw people using illegal drugs as one would see in 'be-ins' or in large rock concerts.
 

 There is also a kind of 'pagan' sub theme suggesting a vague homage to pre Christian religions. Contrary to some scurrilous rumors, there is no visible satanic or serious devil worship in evidence. There is a lot of poking fun at various Christian churches as well as merciless political satire, and as last year there were a number of prominent American flags being flown.
The personality of the place is the sum of what people there make happen. It all adds up to something created by and for some positive aspects of humanity such as creativity, a good attitude toward others in a 'small town' atmosphere, and encouragement of the use of intelligent common sense. The Burning Man Organization term 'Radical Self Expression' is still quite valid for what happens there. There is also some wildness, at least to the limits imposed by the nature of attending to the safety of the 30,000 people at the event.

 The 'clothing optional' nature of the event is in evidence, perhaps 1 percent of men going naked, less women, but perhaps 15 percent of women went topless, more than in previous years. About a third of the men and women had tattoos of varying elaborateness and size, and a much smaller percentage had visible piercings. The age range was from newborn to people in their eighties, with the demographic peak probably in the early thirties. Above trying to make sense of it all was the need to simply experience as much as possible, covering miles of ground each day.
I walked out to the distant perimeter fence in the heat of the day just for the hell of it. For the longest time the perspective of the surroundings doesn't seem to change a bit, you just walk on and on, being glad you filled your canteen. At the fence itself one can see the flatness of the outer playa, untouched beyond the nearby vehicle tracks and stretching to the point the distant edge ends in a shimmering mirage or from the curvature of the Earth itself.
Wandering through the shimmering dry flatness, I came upon a forest of large orange and green flags. They were big enough to stand in the shade of, and for a time I enjoyed the breeze and listened to the fluttering, which formed a kind of audio fractal experience with fainter more distant sounds heard between the closer ones. This and the color contrast against the ivory tan infinite flatness and the rich blue skies brought a moment of profound peace. It was like being in a dream and aware of ones self in an identity different than that of your awake self. One could never quite be sure that you would end up being the same person at the conclusion of a long journey across Black Rock City as you were when you started.
I spent less time with my cameras this year than previously, saving most of my video capturing for the last days. I never got around to hauling my tripod out to obtain steady pictures in the dusty darkness, but by chance I did find two locations where I was able to brace my digital camera and obtain two excellent sets of images of, and from, the Man. Overall I found video the best way to capture images at night with the minimum hassle if I found something exceptional that I owed it to myself to preserve a record of.

 A crazy sight presented itself to those who braved the 'outer zone', a whimsical giant 'Chandelier of the Brothel of Heaven' which fell from a ceiling, complete with the giant ceiling socket and a chain! Not far away stood a weirdly scrambled version of some school yard 'Jungle Gym' climbing bars, twisted and warped like something one might see in a Dr. Suess book.

 The Dust was brilliantly lit by the sun, often it would be picked up along lengthy stretches parallel to the wind direction, often trailing from either side of a major whirlwind like a wake from a ship. It would be a luminous bright moving pattern while facing the sun, and generally darker as it retreated into the distance while facing ones shadow. I could see low streamers of dust approaching and sidestep them with relative ease much of the time, although there were times one had to resign ones self to briefly being inside a dense dust cloud.

 Thursday the night brought more energetic use of lasers, particularly from the distant 'Church Of Wow' camp which had been the Emerald city previously. Art cars slowly rolled around dropping off and picking up people, and 'party barges', some with functional bars, carried revelers and blared music as they wandered through the night.

 Darkness always brought new strange things to see, among them this year a large animated pair of glow-wire eyes which shifted a little in their gaze and occasionally blinked! Through out the darkness people came upon crazy things built and left out there to ponder in the echoing emptiness.Moving on I saw a Greek temple facade on the Esplanade which often had people dancing where the pediment sculptures would be, above the columns.

The most elaborate 'ride' I had ever seen brought to Burning Man was a 40 foot tall 'U' shaped roller coaster type ride in which a pair of brave souls would be hoisted in a rotating car up one side, then released to be hurled back and forth while crazily spinning in the horizontal axis, all while a modest flame thrower is belching fire nearby! Those I saw emerge from the ride loved it.

 A mobile sculpture on a golf cart held ultraviolet lights well apart from a pair of faces looking out to either side, one looking seriously but cheerily serene, the other grimacing like a warrior god ready to be sacrificed to.

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