Oh, my monthly roundups. They are so ridiculously out of sync with real time now that I’ve considered axing the entire series, as I did recently with Photo of the Week. Yet I know this series has some loyal fans — and I’m one of them! Apologies for the delay, but I suppose better is late…

A week without money – the gifting culture and decommodification of Burning Man is one of the things I love most about it. Still, while nothing can be bought or sold on the actual playa, anyone who has ever made it through the gates of black rock city knows it’s not cheap to get there. I…

I’ve heard the phrase, “the playa gives you the burn you need, not the burn you want.” Over the past several years I’ve been inching closer and closer towards the goal of a sustainable life. Perhaps the challenges my camp presented me with were a gift, in a way – a reminder that this is an…

For me, Burning Man is some parts magical and some parts frustrating and some parts blissful and some parts devastating, just like everything that regular life is – except also dusty. There is so much gushing with positivity around Burning Man that I feel almost embarrassed to admit that two years in a row, I had…

Back in 2013, I attempted to answer a question that seemed to come up a lot whenever I referenced my ten day sojourn to the Nevada desert: what the &!*# is Burning Man, anyway? In 2015, I resumed my investigation. After my first burn, I knew that I’d be back — over and over again. The…

Is this festival deep in the heart of the Nevada desert on your bucket list? I hope that after this post, it will be! I attended Burning Man for the first time in 2013, and then again in 2015. Burning Man is intense, y’all. In some ways, it’s taken me almost six full months to process…