The Playa Provides

What else did I do at Burning Man......I volunteered or like I call it, participated. To me (my thoughts), once you have been going to Burning Man a certain amount of times, you should participate beyond you just getting there, setting up your own camp and doing your own thing. Burning Man needs participation from volunteers and a lot of people do volunteer. There are people that work very hard. Making Burning Man happen is no joke. A whole city is built from nothing and then completely taken down. This year about 63K people attended, about 10-20K less than recent years. 
So what did I do? I made snow cones in Center Camp, I did that in 2024 as well. I love doing that. I volunteered as a "slinger" at Arctica where you can get ice. I have done that a few times and it is a lot of fun. And I helped take down Center Camp, aka "strike" and that can get pretty intense. All the sun damage on my face, neck, chest, arms and hands in the last 15 years or so is mainly from being at Burning Man. I try to cover up and use sun screen but sometimes I 'forget" or get caught up in the moment. I need several face and full body laser treatments, and a full red light panel at home.
Daytime at Black Rock City I usually look something like this.

Quetzalcoatl at Foam Home.

At Burning Man you often get asked how many times you have been to Burning Man.....to me it is kind of irrelevant UNLESS you are a Birgin (a first timer at Burning Man), or if you have been going for like 30 years. Or like Danger Ranger, I think this was his 39th year? To me what is important is what you do and how you act at Burning Man. Do you participate? Pick up litter (MOOP)? 
One night while slowly biking back to my camp, I saw this well and decided to stop and look at it. A wishing well, people had written down their wishes in a book that was there. My wish is to be with my loved ones and my pets again. Or to have them here again with me now, to travel back in time when my life was "normal". So I'm standing there by myself looking through the book and contemplating life when I saw a person approaching the wishing well and stopping on the other side of it, opposite me. Our eyes met and and we nodded hello to each other. He (it was a male) was silent the whole time. He stuck his hand into the wishing well, pulled up a ball and handed it to me. It said HEAL on it, our eyes met again and then he waved goodbye to me and I waved back and he turned around and walked away through the dark the same way he came..... This is a perfect example of a Burning Man moment or like we say at Burning Man - the Playa provides and yes it does.

I stopped by the Orgy Dome, I have been there twice before and NO I do not have sex in there, although most people that visit the Orgy Dome do, that is kind of the point. I met somebody this year that wanted to see what is was like in there, so we went. What is great about Orgy Dome is that it is a safe place to be intimate with somebody and they (the Orgy Dome camp people) give everybody that enters a rather thorough lesson on consent. I don't want to say too much about Orgy Dome (you have to go see it for yourself) besides that contrary to what some media/people say about it, like that is it gross, weird, smells or whatever - NO it is not like that. Listen, everybody that goes in there is an adult, consent is taken seriously, no single lurkers, people seem very happy to be there, no smells. Orgy Dome is great. Our Orgy Dome wristbands - Consent Is Sexy.

I found a pink heart (rose quartz maybe?) in the playa dust and a card with a bunny and it says "Patience in investment. You are cultivating a future you'll be grateful for".

Pictures of me. Some people are way too aggressive with their picture taking at Burning Man, often women that spent hours putting together the "perfect" outfit and the "perfect" hair and make up, chasing the perfect picture in front of some art installation, preferably while the sun is setting, these "models" take up way too much time posing and monopolizing the various art installations at Black Rock City. Posing for sometimes hundreds of pictures and videos too, looking in my opinion quite ridiculous in the process. Like WTF? 
My dress was $3 at Walmart, old sportsbra, those pink boots have been going to Burning Man with me since like 2015 and there is no make up and no hair styling here. Yes, I have several "nice" picures of me at Burning Man where I did put some effort into looking cute and I am posing for the picture but some people at Burning Man really do take it too far in trying to capture that perfect Burning Man moment for their social media.

This year somebody told me I was her favorite person at Burning Man.......! And I made friends. I had a wonderful, beautiful time. I feel like my mission this year was to put pictures in the Temple and go through the emotions connected to why I put pictures in the Temple. 
I drove away from Black Rock City on Tuesday afternoon September 8. See you next year!