Eve in Search of a Wolf, Ilka Cohen [book club suggestions txt] 📗

I had wanted to go to Burning Man for 10 years. At least. Somehow it never happened. Family not too encouraging, friends unable to make it in the end, other plans getting in the way, the children too young. Most of all, my courage failed me. I love people and the more the merrier. But I am not an extreme extrovert. There is shyness below the banter and too much self-consciousness. Burning Man – was this not the place for artists, creative people, performers, exhibitionists? What did I have to contribute? No sculptures in the desert for sure. I felt too well-grounded in reasonability and sarcasm for just some touchy-feely new-age experience. Too restrained and middle-aged to just paint my body and dance naked under the desert stars. Too unused to and wary of anything stronger than alcohol to help the creative juices along.
And yet, I wanted the experience. I wanted to have been part of it. And not just as paying tourist at a spectacle. So the years passed until my 50th birthday was suddenly looming ahead. I heard the ticking of the hipness clock. When if not now?
Thus the decision was made: I would celebrate my half-century mark in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. I would invite everybody I even remotely ever wanted to be there on that day. Most would not come. They might shake their head and delete the invitation, decline politely, get a smile out of it or even regret it deeply. But somebody would make the trip with me. And perhaps life would surprise me and there would be more. It beat cake and BBQ in any case.
The first one to sign on to the idea was my friend Samantha. Ten months before the event, we found ourselves discussing what would fit into the VW bus, whether a solar shower was a necessity or luxury, how much water to take, what to wear (of course). And whether we would last the entire week and how to participate. I filled in the volunteer form as soon as I had my ticket. This was also the time when I resolved to do what comes as second nature to me anyway: write a Burning Man diary, take lots of pictures and share it all afterwards. At that time, late last year, I read Martin Millar’s “Love and Peace with Melody Paradise” and imagined Burning Man to be like Melody’s festival: Hot desert instead of a damp English forest, but equally chaotic, exhausting, uncomfortable, exciting, weird, and utterly alive.
Over the months interest in the venture waxed and waned. In the end, I actually set out by myself for the first few days, Samantha, my husband Aaron, Samantha’s daughter Dominique and her friend Victoria following for the long weekend. But after all, there would be some 50,000 more people there to meet and make friends with and share in the celebration.

I missed the actual first day (August 29) because I met with German friends on vacation in South Lake Tahoe first. When I finally left for the desert, I was by far more anxious about the drive than anything else. I don’t like driving and had never done 280 miles by myself. But I managed and arrived around lunch time in white-out conditions, the wind blowing the fine desert dust so fiercely that I could hardly make out the car in front of me and the greeter station when it came up. There I was invited to hit a bell and proclaim “I am not a virgin anymore!” Well, that’s true after all.



Black Rock City has the shape of a not quite closed circle, with radial streets named after the clock hand positions, reaching from 2:00 to 10:00, and the ring roads named after rites of passage, which was the year’s theme. I was told to look for remaining camping spots around the I or K layer. But I had set my mind to living at Birthday street, the B ring, fitting the occasion. So I drove around a bit and lucked out, finding enough space to camp and later add two more cars at Birthday and 6:30. Center Camp is at 6:00, so I was about as centrally positioned as it gets. The neighbors on the right camped in luxury – air-conditioned RV, comfortable camp setup. They immediately helped setting up my little tent, and when I struggled to make a shade structure out of one pole and two tarps, they found an extra one in their truck for me to use. They were two very outgoing nude women from Nevada - one with the funny playa name Monkey Butt – and a couple and another guy from Campo Diablo in California. Chores done, they invited me for a beer and to sign Kathy’s T-shirt. At this point, I had thoroughly accepted the dust and the fact that I would be covered in it for the next 6 days. I handed out some excess jewelry I had brought along for gifting. The Nevada chicks offered me pot and when I explained that I had problems with forcing myself to inhale smoke, they decided I needed it blown then. I agreed, not knowing what to, and one of them inhaled mightily, then gave me kind of a smooch and blew the whole stuff straight into my lungs. That was a bit of a surprise. The effect was one of mellow happiness and relaxation. Not bad but I think I prefer the more energetic buzz of a good drink. Not too mention its flavor.



But duty first – I left a public message on the camp directory computer system about my new address so that Aaron and the others would eventually be able to find me. Cell phone reception is officially non-existing, though occasionally some people get a message out on one bar. That accomplished I went exploring the playa, the big center space in the middle of Black Rock City where all the big art is. And the Man in the center. And the beautiful Temple of Transition farther out. With its chimes playing some ethereal music, full of people resting, dreaming, meditating, all the personal messages and mementos in it, it made me feel suddenly happy in a very fundamental, simple and relaxed way. I climbed on top of the Man, admired the floating whales, the house of doors (when you open one, another one will close and vice versa – very obvious symbolism), the painfully hot and still tempting iron hammock and much more. And all the fantastic mutant vehicles driving through it all. Then left the rest of the art for another time – the playa was much bigger than I had expected and I had gone out there without water and felt parched. The whole experience was somewhat surreal, not the least because of the strong wind, which kept veiling and unveiling different aspects of the playa behind the dust curtain.



On my way back I stumbled into homebrew camp where a group of brewers shared their excellent products. A daily changing variety of beers, cider, mead and odder things like a fermented sweet pea drink. I would come back there almost every day, my favorite watering hole in the desert. The brewers gave away 500 gallons of delicious drinks, a major gift to the city’s thirsty population.
On this first visit, I met and talked for a long time with Scott Monkey from Wisconsin, who has Swiss roots and still spoke the Swiss German of his grandmother’s village. He ran the Speed-Dating Camp with some friends.



Next I looked for the Lamplighters’ camp. After all, I had offered to volunteer there many months ago. They all dress up in white and flame-colored robes and walk the city in solemn procession to hang up kerosene lamps for the night. I was a few minutes late, just saw them leaving. And then somehow never managed again to be around their camp at sunset, too many distractions from my perceived civil duties. Instead I decided to check out the Speed-Dating Camp at 6:30 and Esplanade and got lost for a while. Somehow I had forgotten that Esplanade is not the E street (that one is called Engagement) but the main promenade at the inner edge to the playa. So of course I ended up chatting with other people. There was the guy in the diving suit that looked like a Star Trek uniform (and very hot in the uncomfortable, sweaty sense of the word). Oliver, a German from Hamburg, in the USA since 1980 and now home in Chicago. He belonged to the Department of Mobility Assistance, helping handicapped people to get around the city. The camp was marked by an alien campfire party, all the alien sculptures disturbingly gnawed on. When I finally found Speed Dating, my Wisconsin acquaintance was not there, just 3 guys waiting to be speed-dated. Unfortunately none of them looking like I would want to date them for even the required 2 minutes. So I wandered into the night along the Esplanade, admiring glowing art in the dark, soaking in music from all sides. I hung out at the Gherkin Lounge where they serve martinis with gherkins. Not being a friend of anything pickled, I could still appreciate the martini part. I met some people who ran the Golden Café, a classy bar with live music in the afternoons and actual glass glasses. Closed at night, so I sat with them in their dark bar, sipping an excellent port and observing the riotous street party of neighboring Frenchtown. There were three tuba players in the street band, one of them with a fire-spitting instrument.



I determined to visit the Golden Café some afternoon – of course never got around to it. This night, I entered an inflatable turned over gumball machine art piece filled with small balloons to play around with. Then finished the night with an hour or two of dancing, my dancing wings and blinking medusa hair being much complimented. Feeling tired, I hitched a ride on an art car resembling a cake, which took a bunch of people to Couch Burners, an international camp of couch surfers. Only the car ran out of gas, leaving me stranded at 5:30 and Funeral. Walking home, I came across a Western town style saloon, rock music blasting from it. So I went in, naturally. It was the bar of the DPW (Department of Public Works), the people who build the BRC’s infrastructure and clean up after everybody in the end. They had been in the desert for a month or even more and were running a bit low on the liquid supplies. I liked this place a lot so promised the bartender with the memorable playa name Sissy Bitch