I have never heard of this even until class on Tuesday, but apparently it’s an extremely big deal. It’s more than just a small group of people, gathered around to watch a sculpture of a man burn. This annual festival attracts tens of thousands of people to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.
The burning of the wooden man is the main event, and last year the man stood 104 feet tall. I can’t even imagine seeing this something this massive burning. Last year there were 48,000 people who came to participate in this event. The word participate is crucial because no one goes to simply watch.
Everyone who goes is a participant and is expected to be a part of it in some way. Everybody comes together with something to contribute to make up a self-reliant, self expressive community. It’s not about what you’re supposed to do, but its about what you want do. One participant said, “You can set up a Thomas Jefferson themed party camp. You can run a hotel. My first year at Burning Man I carried around a book of original fairy tales and read them to people I met. Last year I started a war.” It’s a community of people that are all living in the moment. This community of 48,000 makes up the most populated city in America, that literally exists for one week. At the end of the week the city is taken down, and after about a month of tear-down, it’ll as if the city never existed.
These 48,000 people live in the moment for this week, contributing all of their talents, ideas, and wants to a city that is only going to be destroyed.
This event is not cheap, and tickets for the next burning-man festival are going for an average of $1043.85. Last year they were sold-out.
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