Burning Man Thursday

9/3/09 Thursday was pretty low-key. Hung out at center camp mostly and did a lot of cleaning and assessing for the next couple of days. Explored some new corners of BRC. Some people have brought insane amount of stuff! An older man across form me showed up with a huge open trailer that looked like it was full of trash. He works on his site each day and now has a lounge going with seating space and a bar, (BYO) flags and little shrines to everything from lawn gnomes to Buddha. It was mostly cloudy today so there was less solar power harvested than planned. Over-all weather has been a non-issue. Mornings are cool in the 60’s and you can count on 94 with dust and wind by suppertime. I saw some stats on BRC and the population varies but averages @30,000 at any given time. By the end as many as 65-70,000 people may come through. The economy has had little effect on attendees. Met with the “Nomads” and discovered that they are mainly younger RV or tenting ‘full timers’. The biggest thing they had to offer was info on legal advice regarding residency, voting, mobile ID, taxes and health care. Sounded very familiar with some twists. The playa was packed at night and the “Temple” is finished bringing many out to go see it. People write intimate thoughts, confessions, prayers, whatever on the wood of the structure (it’s all wood) and some bring pictures in frames, letters, even works of art to leave at the temple. It will all be burned on Sunday evening long after I will be gone. It’s a very spiritual place with people, praying, meditating, etc. I even witnessed a wedding complete with a lady officiating in rainbow woven dreads who read nicely from her service book held in one hand with a PBR in the other hand to stave off the choking dust that occasionally blew up during the ceremony. I’ve been to great cathedrals and participated in my fair share of services and ceremonies but this concentration of varied spiritual outpouring was unexpected. This is clearly the reason that many people come here. Suffice it to say that I inked my contribution and snagged a piece of scrap construction wood as a souvenir. Speaking of souvenirs, BRC is not the place to come looking for t-shirts or other ‘swag’. Some folks have it but they either made it or bought it in California somewhere where such stuff is not popular with seasoned burners. This IS the place to see body art. Most of it is the cheap stuff I don’t understand or appreciate but some is high art. Today, Friday, I will haul the computer to center camp, try to get an email out and start looking at the weather in order to choose a calm route home. Where I am now typing at ‘T@B camp’ I can see the BRC airport. Lots of planes flying in for the weekend. Hard to believe there will be nothing here at all in about 10 days.