If you don't have plans for the first weekend in September, consider traveling to one of the most desolate places on earth for a surreal and dazzling good time

Driving across the desolate dry lake known as the Black Rock desert in Nevada--the largest continuous flat space in the United States and not far from where the U.S. government tested some of its atomic bombs years ago-- the horizon liquefies in the heat and suggests to the eyes the presence of things not there and obscures the most improbable thing that is: a sudden community of a few thousand gathered to witness the annual torching of a forty-foot man constructed of wood and neon.

Closing in, the encampment seems a cross between Las Vegas and a gigantic flea market. Under makeshift tents, canopies of vinyl and canvas anchored with scrap plastic tubing, camping stakes and the occasional unplugged TV, refugees of the mainstream and kids looking for the next big thing sip their beers and watch as their new neighbors arrive and cavort. Nudists show off their pierced genitalia. Neo-pagans improvise ceremonies. Traveling Monks pass out their desktop published magazine. A car transformed into a huge shark swims by, fins curving as it turns. From around a school bus lodge comes a motorized dragon fly. Happy nihilists sit back, smoke a bowl, and smirk.

The occasion for this congregation of hippies, artists and just plain weird folk is officially called "The Burning Man" or the "Black Rock Desert Festival," and this Labor Day weekend, August 31st-September 4th, 1995, marks its tenth anniversary. Begun as a way to exorcise himself from a romantic break-up, Larry Harvey first erected and burned a wooden man on San Francisco's Baker Beach in 1985. When the man's immolation began attracting crowds, authorities frowned on the fledgling ritual and Harvey was forced to find a new location.He allied himself with a local performance and prankster group called the San Francisco Cacophony Society and together they moved the show to Nevada. As the Cacophony Society also has chapters in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington and Los Angeles, the event quickly became a gathering of the tribes, each of these groups adding their own events and installations to round out a full weekend of bizarre attractions.

Last year, for example, the schedule included a Desert Fashion Show, the roast of a 20 foot clay chimney known affectionately as "The Lingham," a Drive-by Shooting Range, two raves on the perimeter of the mud flats, and a World Wresting Federation-style match that pitted Moses and Joan of Arc against defending champs, Richard M. Nixon, and a representative of the SS. Indeed, the camp was nothing if not a cacophony. Radios tuned to one of the two pirate radio stations broadcast from a pair of Winnebagos. In another ear, you could hear folks taking their nuptial vows--for the next six hours--at a makeshift Chapel of Love.

And despite all the creative lunacy, nothing surpassed the experience of a soak and mud bath at the desert hot springs, not thirty minutes away by car. Whether at dawn or during the heat of the day, the thermal warmth and surfuric steam clears the head and soothes the body. Folks took to smearing the black and gray mud on each other, playing like children, but admiring one another's physiques like adults.

The weekend's climax lived up to its billing: the burning man sent the on- lookers into a frenzied circle dance, everyone twirling, hugging, tripping, laughing, and throwing sacrificial clothes and totems into the blaze. Then, with everyone's energy at a peak, Shark Bait, a percussion-driven band that had erected a stage just to the side of the pyre, distributed car fenders, corrugated tin and aluminum, engine blocks, and other scrap metal and showered the crowd with three boxes worth of drumsticks. Soon, with the flames still beating at our backs, several hundred beat out a new, other- worldly rhythm.

The morning after, with tents collapsing and the crowd draining away, one begins to distrust one's memories: the costumed six-foot rabbit that asked you if you'd seen his ears, the purple-pink light of flares illuminating the desert floor, the primal screams, murmurs and showers of sparks. As you pull away, and the camp recedes and then vanishes in a cloud of dust, it's easy to think it all a tremendous hallucination.

Interested parties can arrange to participate by mail: Burning Man, P.O. Box 420572, San Francisco, CA 94142-0572; by phone: (Burning Man hot line in the U.S.), (415) 985-7471; or on-line: http://www.well.com/user/burnman/register.html.

Article by Brad Wieners ©1994; braddog@well.com

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Party at Ground Zero | Brad Weiners