16: Essentials

Water was essential. Water was life. Water made the day cool and the night long. Water kept us sane. Not once all week did I have a hangover. And every time I went to the pisser, I walked out thinking the same thing: excellent, clear and abundant, again. It may be more than you wanted to hear about, but the fact is, water was the fundamental thing that made Burning Man possible. And you can't spell fundamental without fun. Whereas usually my wife is the Water Police, this week it was I who made sure she was hydrated, I was hydrated, and the people around us were hydrated. Over and over again I asked G if he was thirsty. More often than not he refused my offer of H-2-O. And that's why, more often than not, each morning he woke up with a headache. I definitely drank more beer than him, but I also definitely drank gallons more water than he did, and it served me well.

Food was sorta tough for us. We brought a lot off options because we weren't sure what we'd feel like eating out in that environment. The hard boiled eggs and the Tasty Bites meals turned out to be the best decisions. We'd leave the Tasty Bites out on our dashboard all day, and by the evening they'd be nice and warm, just right for dinner. Sandwiches and bread just didn't appeal to us out there in the heat. The afternoons we mostly snacked on whatever delicious plate someone was passing around. Fruit, cheese, crackers, thick slices of steak, marinated chicken, sausages, plates of deliciousness were passed around camp all afternoon, every day. The guacamole Lu and I made, using at least fifteen avocados, was devoured rapidly. These people had come prepared, and their good choices helped us to eat well. Lu had hot, tofuy vegetable soup that just hit her in the right spot. She didn't eat a whole lot. I certainly didn't feast, but I made sure I made myself full at least once a day.

It turned out that getting enough salt was huge, too. After all, sweat is salty and you have to replace it. Beef jerky was the solution for me. I ate more beef jerky those five days then I ever have in my life, combined. I've just never been a jerky guy. Out there I craved it. I could feel the salt flooding my body and straightening me out. But the Turkey Jerky from Trader Joe's just didn't cut it. I needed good ole'fashioned shoesole leathery chunks of grade-A american beef jerky. And I had floss, too. The only one with it, and it was as well shared as the food everyone provided.

Beer was essential, at least for me. I brought 2 and a half cases of good beer and 2 thirty packs of Tecate. After all, it was was camp Curvas Peligrosas. Tecate seemed appropriate. And Corona made up one case of the bottles, while Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was the rest of it. Lu brought three bottles of potato Vodka from Trader Joe's. Soda water, Mango Lemonade and a bit of Monster energy drink was the mix sloshing around in her Nalgene all week. It was enough for each of us to have and share readily. We didn't even crack into the last 30 pack, but having it ready felt good.

Bikes. Bikes were everything. Bikes made Black Rock City go 'round. I've fallen in love with biking since that week. I loved riding bikes with my friends when I was young, in the streets of suburbia. If Burning Man has only given back to me the wheeling, wonderful freedom of life balanced on two wheels, I will be forever grateful. But already I can feel so much more.

Flexibility, resilience, humor and tolerance were the four most valuable traits I saw in others, and were what I tried to maintain throughout the experience. Things are constantly in flux, blown hard by the wind and opened wide by the expansive possibilities. An agenda is basically a bullet point reference to the things that didn't work, couldn't be found or got fucked up somehow. Much better to flow with world and find everything in it's own time. It was good to have goals and plans and ideas, of course, but being tied to any of them with rigid focus only made us miss the good things happening all around. The elements were harsh and you had to be able to push on through and make it work. Wet naps made physical resilience a littler cleaner. Mental resilience required water, food, and well-paced partying. Humor and tolerance are a part of that, too. You're going to see stuff and hear stuff and find stuff you don't get or don't want or don't agree with. So you walk on, unless it bothers you so much you have to say something, and then you should. Disagreement is fine. Violence isn't. Luckily we didn't see anything of that sort, either art so offensive as to elicit comment, nor any random fights. Although, later on I did hear there was a Fight Club at Burning Man. I'm glad I was no where near it, if it is true.

Friends made the trip what it was. It was fantastic to meet new friends out there on the playa. But sharing another adventure with old friends you'd explored other cities with, all over America, well it was extra special. I thought of so many other old friends I knew would love so much about Burning Man, too.

Flashlights, extra batteries, bandanas, dustmasks, goggles, sunglasses, a shade hat, water bottles, coolers, gas for the car, one foot long rebar tentstakes to hammer into the playa, a hammer! Jumper cables. A solarbag. 2x4s and wood pallets to build a shower. Shade tents. Turntables, mixer, cables, speakers. Big ones. Tequila. Couches. A grill. Coolers and fresh ice. Bungie cords. Warm socks. The air mattress was essential. More blankets would have been nice. A warm hat. The bike rack. Our Crocs. They should issue them at the gate of Black Rock City. Costumes. Tit paint. Rock and roll was essential, and I made sure some of it got pumped through those camp speakers at one point or another.

Most of all, it was essential that we put all those things together as effortlessly as possible and roll through the day and night with our eyes wide open, our lungs full of laughter and our bellies full of water or beer or festivus or whatever and that at the end of each day we take the slowing of our bodies to heart, and we lay on the airmattress in the star-filled dark, and we sleep, and we dream and then again, we wake up thirsty.

I felt connected to the natural rhythms of my body. I felt the power of the earth and elements. Lu and I flourished by listening to and helping one another. New friendships and new experiences with old friends made my soul feel brighter, energized, enhanced as only a community of people all working together towards the same goal can.

Imagination is essential. Love is essential. And I'm not sure which comes first, the love or everything else I've already mentioned, but over the years and I've found that if you have all of this, you know love well, and that if you're one that knows much about love, you have all of this already.

A touch of insanity doesn't hurt, either, out there. In many ways, going to the desert to play is certainly about losing it. And together, out there, all of us were losing it or something just a little bit. Like the heat that was impossible to resist, you just had to stay cool.

I thought about all of this as Lu and I rode back from center camp. We were borrowing a bike so we didn't want to be out all day.

We rounded the corner of 4:30 oclock and Gestalt and neither of us had to pee. But down the dusty street, fairly close to where Curvas Peligrosas lay, a vast horde of people had gathered.

We pedaled closer. "What the fuck's going on?" I said aloud.

I pulled up inside our camp marveling at the crowd gathered around the camp across the street from ours. I parked my bike against our car, right in front of our tent. Lu leaned her's up against the back bumper. We looked quizically at one another and then moved into the hangout dancefloor area of Curvas Peligrosas, and there on the couches sat women with brushes in their hands, dipping them into little jars of paint, and gently, gently, gently painting round the nipples and the breasts and the areolas of a variety of rather gorgeous women. Standing on the carpet of our camp, I tried to pretend I wasn't totally amazed.

Breasts are essential. Sex is essential. Love and lust and painted boobies in the sun are essential to making sure Burning Man strides to the edge of what you expect. I didn't expect to find this in our camp today. I didn't expect to wake up grumpy. But since both of those things did happen, I'm thrilled they happened to happen on the same day. After all, timing is essential, too.