at Burning Man I was walking across the playa with 2 girls and another guy. For those of you, oh my brothers, that don’t know how Burning Man is laid out;
Imagine a donut shape with a clock on it.
Now, imagine that the diameter of the larger circle is 5 miles, and the smaller is 1.5 miles.
Now, take the areas between 10 and 2 o’clock away.
The area between the remainder of the two circles is where everything is. The empty areas have little to nothing, save a few art installations and the Man himself, who is smack dab in the middle. If you still can’t visualize it, go to the website and check it out.
Anyhow, the four of us were crossing that area in the middle one night. The other three were in standard playa gear, which was just really dusty clothes and goggles. I, of course, was in a toga. We were about 1/2 mile north of the man, so we could see the lights of Burning Man spanning the horizon.
“Look at this…” said one of the girls.
I looked where she was pointing, which was the southernmost area of the camp. All of the lights had gone out, and the lights to the left and right were going out in sequence.
“Why are those lights going out?” the other girl asked.
“They’re not going out, that’s a dust storm!!” the guy said.
“Quick, get under the toga!!” I yelled.
This was one of the best ideas I have ever had. My toga was fairly long, and wrapped around the 4 of us quite easily. For those that give a damn, it was made from two navy blue blankets I got at Target. I know, I know, you’re supposed to use cloth that’s cut into a semi circle. You know what though? This worked, it was cheap, and it saved my life, as I will go on to explain.
Everyone huddled in close to me. I grabbed the toga with both hands and swung it around us all, almost as Batman would do with his cape. With everyone in the toga, the dust hit us. The force was pretty strong. After the force of it had subsided, I stuck my head out of the toga/shell. The dust was thick in the air, but we were safe from the worst of it. Everyone stood up, and started looking around.
Nothing.
We couldn’t see anything.
You think you understand, but really you don’t. I’m not talking about being blind, or seeing empty space. Empty space is something. This was a void. I felt like a videogame character in one of those universes where if you go too far north you end up in the south, and vice versa. No direction seemed to be the right one, as each direction looked the same as the other. This is saying a lot, since there were 25,000 people camped in one direction, and nothing in the other. We kept our eyes squinted and saw a small light somewhat close to us.
We walked towards the light (no crazy midget jokes, please) and found a Volkswagen van with Christmas lights and curtains in the windows. We knocked on the door, and was greeted by a scruffy man in his 40’s. He had a beard, short hair, and no shirt. He got us all into the van, which was an accomplishment, as the area near where one of the doors had been was converted into a bar. The doors closed, and the bar opened.
The bartender offered us a chocolate martini. I gladly accepted, as I’d never had one. It was quite awesome, especially considering that the last thing I had in my mouth was playa dust. I then had some “zambooka” (sp?). I can’t remember it all that well, except that it was yummy.
We stayed there for a bit until we could see out the windows again, meaning the dust had cleared. We left, happy, alive, and martini-ed.