A Little Light

Two years ago my husband and I stumbled into the Burning Man community. Most days I would like to think that this is a side note to the journey I've been on. Our experience has been tumultuous at best. This isn't to say that it has been without benefits.

The path to Burning Man is different for everyone. Ours has been fraught with both joy and intense sorrow. We found the community we thought we were looking for, and then found that like all communities it has it's dramas and issues. In truth it is a lesson well learned. The utopic community that we want to believe exists doesn't. Every community has the same demographic disparity of good people and people that you'd prefer you didn't have to deal with.

Burning Man extends beyond the event itself. It is a living morphing idea that is carried into the world and throughout the year by a handfull of it's participants. I would say that a large percentage of the people that attend are there for the party. It is that. But that's not all. Some of them participate as a community year round, and bless them for being able to live at that level of intensity. Some of them, like me and mine, carry this idea in our hearts and souls year round, living at a level below the crashing waves of the communities surface.

"To me Burning Man is" - you hear this a lot among the participants who all realize that BM is what you make of it for yourself - to me the most pervasive benefit of BM is the shift in paradigm. Black Rock City is a social experiment on the grandest of scales. It is a gigantic village formed of small pods of people. Each pod (called a camp) is a working community on a smaller scale. Each pod is a fully functioning and self sufficient village of it's own - ideally speaking. They all really do try their best. It's a lot of hard work on a very temporary scale, but it does show you a different way to live - and that you can live comfortably and happily without many of the conveniences we have come to believe are necessary to daily living. That you can benefit from living and working together outside of the nuclear construct that is so familiar. That working together outside of that construct is necessary to survival outside of the machine. Everyone has their own internal assets that they bring to the table - and only working together does this become joyful and easy. It can be done alone - but it would be much harder.

Last fall was my first trip to BRC. I remember on returning that I stood in my own bathroom filled with wonder as the water ran freely from the tap. After ten days filled with travelling, camping, and pumping my own water from a barrel - the miracle of running water overwhelmed me. I quickly shut it off having come to view it as the precious resource that it is.

This wasn't a new concept to me. I lived in Alaska for a short time where we had to have our water trucked to the house. Conservation was imperative. But after years of living in the city where the resources seem to appear like magic through the fuse box, through the faucet, through the gas lines; you tend to lose a little perspective.

Our journey to Burning Man took us ten years from first hearing about it. It took 18 months from our introduction to the local community. In the midst of this journey, and at a time when our lives were in the largest flux my husband and I have known together, some very special people appeared in our lives.

For years now I've had this niggling nonsensical dream of moving to the mountains to raise goats. (My adoration for these creatures is a story all it's own that I will have to tell at another time.) At our local "Burn", Apogaea, we met a woman who had brought horses to the event. The novelty of course drew us in, and again the developing friendship is a story all it's own, but it was the goats that got me. She and her husband live on a small ranch (if 42 acres is small - it seems a vast expanse to someone used to living on a tiny plot in the city), and she has a herd of fiber goats. This was indeed the initial motivation to making the trek onto the plains for a visit.

I was working on a self portrait project at the time. She had her daughter go fetch a baby goat and bring it into the kitchen so that I could make an attempt at capturing my portrait for the day with the wee creature. Trying to get livestock to cooperate in a busy kitchen proved challenging - and after getting to know this woman better I understand that this was as much for her own entertainment as it was for my benefit. This act, however it was intended, won my heart. Somehow, in the weeks and months that followed, she and hers became my own. They are as close to family as any that I share blood with, and the experiences that follow that moment have shone more light on the doorway than any others.

(Idlewild Ranch has a it's own blog that I contribute to on occasion. While it is an integral part of this journey, it's only part of this story.)

It's important to me to share all of this as part of my journey. I believe the thought process that has led me down this path, closer than even to the door - the way out - is necessary to understanding the rest. At heart I'm a writer. It's a compulsion that I can't escape. So here I am, putting my thoughts on the page. So, please, excuse the backstory. I've started capturing this mid journey really. The last 34 years of my life have been leading me on to this point, but most of what pertains to finding the door has been going on inside my head. I'd like to think that now - we are at the exciting part. This is where the action begins. I'm at vantage point on a hill where I can actually see the door. I fear the huge chasm between between myself and it. I fear that as I cross the dark valley of uncertainty I may lose sight of the door. I'm operating on a lot of faith here - so I'm going to take a step forward.

The only way out is forward.