Returning to Burning Man after a three-year gap.
2016 was my fourteenth Burning Man. Hard to explain, but I’m compelled — or condemned — to keep returning.
It’s not quite celebration and it’s not quite complaint. I don’t always want to go. I don’t always have the money or the time or the spoons. But the gap years are strange. I have recurring Burning Man dreams in years when I don’t attend — sometimes several per year. Camps on university campuses, in El Centro, in San Francisco neighborhoods.
The clearest thing I can say about why I keep going: it’s where I found my tribe. The San Diego burner community introduced me to most of my other friends. The Rangers became a different family entirely. The event is the anchor point for something that runs continuously.
One year I answered a Quora question about what gift I give people at Burning Man: “I spend my vacation time working for the org so that everyone else can have fun. The work is a lot of fun, but it’s also my gift.”