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| Our approach across the playa from Lorax Camp to the Man on Saturday night. The night of the burn is definitely the most active night at Burning Man: people are out in force, and more things are going on everywhere. The burn itself is just the beginnin g of the night's activities: Liz and I wandered for hours afterwards, seeing things and tlaking to people. The Man's arms are now held up; for most of the week they are at his sides. |
| All those little lights that you can't really see were fire dancers. There were a large number of fire expositions going on around the Man just prior to the burn. Unfortunately, we had the lovely priviledge of being right behind two very tall men who re fused to sit down. They were over six feet each, particularly the light-colored hat right in the center, and several members of our party are under five. Thus, I myself wasn't so bad off, but the shorter of my group couldn't see anything. We asked them several times to sit (and almost everyone else was), but their rationalization was that they were there first, therefore they had a blessed right to do as they pleased, QED. |
| A fireworks display displays the beginning of the end for our bipedal pheonix. The crowd leaps to its feet (notice one lad a full head taller than the others). For safety, everyone is kept back a hundred feet or so (hard to judge), but as soon as the Ma n topples people charge in to dance around the fire. |
| The Man begins to burn in earnest. The fireworks continue, but the flames are now the main event. |
| Our best shot of the burn. The Man is atop his platform, all of it engulfed in flames. Some people are already within the perimeter, but are probably still at a safe distance. People are cheering, and a cacophony of hand drumming surrounds us. |
| The neatest thing we saw was not man-made at all. The heat caused the air to swirl, creating twisters that bult near the Man and headed away. These two came very close to one another, wrapping around each other in a dance. The air was also filled with sparks and flying ash. The twisters only formed on the side that we were on, so our placement was very fortunate. |
| The Man has toppled, and people are running around the enormous bonfire. Men in heatsuits closely surrounded the fire, keeping the more daring of the people safe and also preventing the fire from spilling out too much. These Balrogs appeared surreal as we ran, guardians of the flame. |
| Another shot of running around the fire. We had several interesting experiences in the chaos, the best of which was losing and then finding Brian in the crowd no less than three times. We figured then that we were meant to be with him that night, but we later lost him for good at Dr. Megavolt (the second biggest attraction that night). Ah, well. |
