Burning Man celebrates art and life with ritual burn
BLACK ROCK CITY, Nev. — By 9 p.m. Saturday night most of the sold-out house of 50,000 Burners at the Burning Man main event on the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach were gathered around the perimeter fence surrounding the 40-foot-tall effigy standing atop a pyramid of wood construction.
At 9 p.m. a troupe of men and women carrying torches marched about the inside fence. They were followed by men and women in light clothing twirling batons topped with flames. Not exactly your standard beginning for the immolation. After about 40 minutes of tossing flames back and fireworks began. It was a reported $30,000 in pyrotechnics that went off in an astounding show on the Black Rock playa. Earlier in the day festivities went off without a hitch. See more photos here.
Meanwhile, a mile-long string of white balloons far overhead passed across the fireworks display with some of the ballooned exploding from the fireworks.
But the crowd, gathered as much as 10 persons deep, was getting restless and wandering about until at about 10 p.m. when the flames began licking up from the statue's base to its legs, then on up to the torso and finally until the head was wreathed in flames.
Much more quickly than in the past, the Man was all in flames. Within 10 minutes the Man had begun to shed burning pieces of his wooden body. And in a few more minutes the entire base pyramid was burning so fiercely that waves of heat could be felt 100 yards away. Finally, it all went down in a spectacular crash of burning timber.
It was more like a scene from a Fourth of July beach scene than the usual climatic even of the seven-day celebration of alternative life styles with all the weirdly-decorated floats lining the circle.
Sunday night the 25th Burnings Man event wound up with builders and crews setting fire to art works scattered about the playa. Most important was the burning of the Temple where many Burners had written message to loved ones, sweethearts and even loved pets. They all went up in smoke and fire.
Next year something new as Burning Man switches from a LLC corporation to a nonprofit one. As they say around Burning Man, things change.