BM2K7 Playa ROM Playa Prologue First Day A Busy Day The Man Burns Early Rebuilding the Man A Very Full Night and Day Kidsville Happenings The Man Burns The Temple of Forgivenesss Burns Return to the Default World Decompression
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Burning Man 2007: The Temple of Forgivenesss Burns
2 September 2007
Here's Ranger HQ, located at the 6 o'clock position in Center Camp. The lights at left are a pleasant red, 'cause of gels covering them, the ones at right are a horrid bright industrial blue-white. This year's low point in public relations.
Was this the Man? I think so. I ought to have taken better notes. Sigh.
This evening (that is to say, morning) is a quiet shift, and I'm off by 07:00 and asleep a few minutes later. Ranger Widow Rose lets me sleep until a bit before lunch, which is in full swing all around me as my eyes open. Kidsville is a great place in which to wake.
There's this ramp, you see, in the Kidsville piazza, that has Isaac and Lila absolutely thrilled. They're constantly launching themselves off it, first timidly, and now with more and more abandon.
Hand-washing at the staff commissary. Last year lots of staff members were ill with something communicable just before the event opened. This year there are hand-washing and disinfection stations all around, and lots of social pressure to use them, and we've all been healthy. This is outside the main entrance, with the recycle bag full, about to be tossed into the appropriate dumpster.
Yet another of our Kidsville neighbors asks for a portrait. (If any of you wants the full-size versions of the thumbnails shown here just email me.) These folks, and many around us, are already striking camp. The city has started to evaporate. There's a certain cachet to leaving early and missing this evening's Temple burn. Hey, some staffers are just coming in for the first half of the week, leaving before the "tourists" clutter up the place. Me, I love every minute of it all.
Here's Isaac hitting that bicycle ramp. Our RV and aluminet shade structure is in the background. Already there's a feeling of room in the city, and a non-stop background noise of leaving vehicles.
The packing becomes more frenzied. Art cars, shade structures, poles, kitchens, and whole camps disappear into the backs of cars, trucks, RVs, and busses.
In a repeat of yesterday, we have dinner, clean everything away, wipe down the kids and get them into new clothes, I hunt in the dark for what we need to go, and then it's time, and en masse the Kidsville crowd leaves for the burning of the Temple of Forgiveness. We're closer today, and it's hotter, and more intense an experience. The sadness of the event ending is palpable. More hugs, more lingering, more moments slowly taken.
Everyone asleep, I head out on another graveyard shift. This is the upper structure of the Center Camp, one of my favorite places in the whole world (and that's saying something). Sure, some years it's more social, some more quiet, but it's unlike any other place I've seen, from California to Reykjavîk.
Almost midnight, and I'm back in line at the Center Camp Café, awaiting some chai + half-and-half. No better fuel for dealing with the sordid underbelly of Black Rock City :-)
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