Oh, The Places You'll Go!

I didn't write about my third trip to Burning Man in 2010. I'm not sure why. Eight months into a bumpy year of losing my job, a bruised ego, and trying to figure out what would come next, I stepped out onto the playa, into a camp I'd just joined earlier that year, and it began to rain. Hard. The playa doesn't take to rain well, at least not if you're trying to walk on it. It becomes a very cement-like type mud. Quickly. Luckily, rain there doesn't last long and about 10-15 minutes later, it subsided and left a fantastic and intense rainbow afterwards. And then it did the most perfect thing and doubled. You could hear cheers across the entire playa. The collective joy was infectious. I was Home. I was officially a burner.

You might think it odd I didn't consider myself a burner until the third time I made this crazy trip to the desert. I certainly participated to the fullest extent each time - well, mostly - but it can take some time to decide if that's what you want to be. You can lose and find your bearings within seconds of each other at an event where your bearings are constantly shifting because your comfort level is continually being challenged and you don't know what to wear or bring because someone is always wearing something better or brighter and there's so much to see you couldn't possibly see it all. Phew! For me though, it was a sense of belonging. I belong to a magnificent community now and It belongs to me. The community of Burning Man is the larger parental life-force, but I'm talking about the community of my own camp, Hippocampus.

My very first trip was phenomenal and new and shocking and so many other words I can't find right now that wouldn't describe it appropriately anyway. I knew there was nothing like it anywhere in the rest of the world. And I was there. To experience it all.

Pixie, who now lives in Portland and is a blonde force to be reckoned with when she's trying to convince you of something new, coerced me into the idea of going in the first place because, the smartie that she is, she suggested an offer I couldn't really refuse. She'd buy my ticket if I went with her. A free trip to Burning Man. In retrospect, this was an enormous gift. I don't think I quite understood it at the time, but the burn changed my life. Really and truly it did and still does. I'll always be grateful to that gorgeous girl for opening that door for me.

Afterwards, I returned to the Real World in an extremely calm and happy state and could only attribute that to the indescribable experience I'd just had - and all the Vitamin D from a week's worth of non-stop sun. I couldn't stop talking about my adventure and knew I was going back in the coming year. No question. I just wanted to be a bit more comfortable and wanted a bit more of an organized clan.

My second year I became a sort of Pixie. I talked up the experience so much that a whole group of friends decided to come with me. No tents this time, RV's instead and we camped with extended friends called Baggage Check who promised covered showers. I swear, a week of cleaning yourself with baby wipes will change you and not in ways you'd appreciate.

For whatever reason, my second burn was just meh for me. I'm so glad my friends fell in love with the playa despite my experience that year, but I expected to feel more at home and instead felt awkward and out of place. I didn't connect with anyone in our extended camp and I was distracted by the boyfriend I desperately missed because we were deep in our honeymoon phase when I left. The frequent and lengthy dust storms that year didn't help either so with two more days still to get thru, I felt defeated and wanted to go home. I needed a stronger community to surround me and knew before I came back again, I'd have to find that.

It's an understatement that 2009 was a difficult year. I didn't go to the burn because I didn't want to pretend I was ok. Your issues have a way of finding you in the desert because there are so many opportunities for being rubbed raw - and not in a good way. It's the desert. Even surrounded by 50,000 people, you can end up on your own and feel isolated within your own reflections. I'd been reflecting.. all year.. and I couldn't move past it. I needed to jumpstart my healing after spending most of the year being so depressed no one, including myself, recognized me. So I spent two amazing weeks in Barcelona distracting myself and trying to let go. It didn't magically fix everything, but I felt renewed and more positive so by the following year, I was finally grounded and whole.

2010 was the Year of the Hippo - for me anyway. Introduced by common friends, I noticed there was always a welcoming feeling when you walked into any Hippocampus party or potluck. Someone always reached out to me, the homes I was invited to always lacked that ego-driven first impression energy where people are looking you up and down or wondering who you're connected to. Instead there were hugs. Not handshakes. Hugs. As in a hug from everyone who met you and in a room of 20-30 people, that's a lot of hugging. It felt like I'd stepped back into the burn for a moment each time I met these people.. and tho I didn't quite know what to expect being involved with a working theme camp, I knew this was a better fit for me.

The Hippos are a fun group to be apart of despite the fact Hippocampus is a working theme camp, which means just that - you work a lot. There are domes to set up, shade structure to tie down, and cafe and dinner shifts to work. It could sometimes be frustrating and difficult, but the Hippos were organized, they got their dance on often and well, they're very present and open and they're really a very genuinely loving group of people. It also doesn't hurt they're really easy on the eyes - like seriously, our people are so pretty it's ridic. And even tho I didn't connect with many of them as much as I'd wanted to before the trip,  we arrived at camp, right before the double rainbow moment and that was spectacularly good sign.

I had two favorite camp moments that year: when we volunteered at the gates for our greeter shift at the beginning of the week and David and Victor's wedding at the end of it. Each time it was something we did as a whole camp together and the energy and happiness just oozed out pores. You couldn't help but get caught up in it and who wouldn't want to?

The greeters are your last point of check in before you head into the playa. As a virgin burner, the greeters are in charge of beginning your first burn positively because we know the virgins are excited and nervous and have no idea what to expect. So once it's your turn to be greeted, they ask you where you're from and how many times you've been to Burning Man. If it's your first time, they ask you to get out of your vehicle so they can begin your official initiation. First, you're welcomed Home with a big hug and a huge smile. Then, since the dust is going to be in everything you own anyway, they ask you to get intimately acquainted with it and make a dust angel, roll around in it, whatever. Yes - many people protest, but usually they all give in. Lastly, they give you a metal rod and tell you to ring the bell closest to the gate and exclaim as loudly as possible, ‛I'm a virgin no more!’ This seals your entry, you're hugged again, because why not, and you're sent off with the sound advice to drink more water, don't put anything in the potty that doesn't come out of your body and safety third! Well, that last one is a Hippo saying we just find funny..

We met people from all over the world. I remember a girl from as far away as Dubai. There were car or busloads of Irish, Norwegians, Danes, Canadians, Israelis.. I mean,  it was incredible to me to understand the hours of travel anyone from outside the states had to do to get there, but they came regardless. Last year, Burning Man was listed in Time Magazine's book, Great Places of History: Civilization's 100 Most Important Sites: An Illustrated Journey, so this one-of-a-kind event had finally been acknowledged as the magical place it is and I feel really lucky to live so close to it although many of the people we greeted traveled days or even weeks to be there and put my little 16 hour trip each way to shame. Greeting is now such high point of the trip for all of us, we've since made it a burn tradition and volunteer for a shift every year.

Our friend Sebastian greets a virgin at the 2011 Rites of Passage burn and is instructing her how to get down and dirty, so to speak, in the dust for the first time. You can also see the line of bells along the front of the gates. 

Again from 2011's burn, Rites of Passage. At the end of our shift, we're all on our camp bus on our way back to camp. We were tired and exhausted because this was taken at 8am. 2010's shift was a Tuesday, 12pm to 4pm and it was hot like whoa. But this last year, we worked a Tuesday, 4am to 8am shift. A totally different experience. Shockingly, the line was much, much longer when we arrived to greet at 4am. This line at 8am was nothing obviously. 

Then there was David and Victor's wedding. They're a super sweet and gorgeous couple from New York at the time who were/are long-time burners and Hippos. Getting to know them beforehand was fun. They reminded me of my best gay boyfriends in Seattle, very easy to get along with, biting wit if needed, but not catty. They're just very genuine guys who were/are madly in love. Their ceremony couldn't have been more moving and powerful for all of us. I'd never seen a wedding so eclectically dressed, but this was their second family and they wanted all of them, or rather, us, to be part of it. I felt extremely honored. We even threw them a super fun bachelor party the night before with our own Hippo lap dancers - one professional, one just for comedy. It was all kinds of awesome.

The happy couple picked out an art instillation to have their wedding under (which of course is not really pictured - sorry!)  and their closest friends covered them with a canopy (it was extremely windy that afternoon).

Two of our group went around the Hippo circle surrounding David and Victor and wrapped ribbon around our wrists so we were all connected. I thought this was a really lovely idea. 

Some of the hippos to the left of me in the circle. Our wedding attire was requested to be silvery or steampunk if we could. Hardly formal attire, but it qualifies as 'burner wedding' for sure.

Returning to the Real World after that was disappointing. We all emailed about our decompression depression because so many of the Hippos don't live in Seattle and after a week's worth of intense connection and everyone goes back home, you miss them. A lot. So to prevent disconnection in our own city, we began our own Seattle traditions. Almost every Friday there's a potluck at the home of one couple who also were first-year Hippos like me and luckily, live only two blocks from my house. We created nights of dancing and taking over straight bridge-and-tunnel type clubs who didn't know what to think of us when we showed up dressed to the burner nines. We have birthday parties and baby showers and celebrate New Year's together and some are in a men's or women's group looking for a bit more direction and evolution in their lives. I've reached out to many of them for support, love, advice,  venting, laughter, dinners, costumes to borrow.. I mean it's my bottomless resource. They're people I want to emulate and they influence me positively. They're my chosen family. They've made me stronger, wiser, more patient, more open, more kind.. a better person overall.

Thank you, Pixie, for saying those three little words, 'Come with me.' It changed my life. Sparkly love to you and all my Hippos.