Josh and I got up around 4am. He went to go fetch the van from where it had languished for two weeks in the SSV satellite campground parking area, while I started breaking down and packing the remaining stuff in our yurt. We packed and packed, then we disassembled the yurt itself. While we loaded the van, we turned on the radio to listen to BMIR (the Burning Man radio station) to see if we could get any news about Exodus times and tips. At one point when we were nearly finished loading, the radio abruptly cut out. We investigated and discovered that we’d completely run down the battery (doh!), and now we were screwed unless we could find someone with jumper cables to give us a jump.
It was just after sunrise, and we started wandering around SSV looking for people who were awake and packing up, asking if anyone had jumper cables. We eventually found some people who were getting ready to leave who said they’d be willing to give us a jump, but they had no cables. Then, miracle of miracles, we found someone who had cables. (You can be sure that next year’s Burning Man kit will include jumper cables!) We put cables and healthy battery together with our dead battery and yay, it worked. We got in the car and headed out of the city around 7am.
But of course “headed out” isn’t really what we did...what we did was drove out the streets of the city towards the gate, where we promptly ran into the Exodus line and stopped. For hours. And hours. And hours. At this point we were too exhausted, anxious and cranky to want any additional interaction with our fellow burners, so we stayed in the car rather than getting out and helping to create “pop-up neighborhoods” with the folks in line around us (yet another one of those things that seems like a great idea until you’re in it). We dozed and listened to the radio, and I wrote for a while in my journal, but mostly we just sat there and waited and waited and waited. Every once in awhile a pulse would come and we’d move forward a bit.
After close to 8 hours (!) in line, we finally hit pavement at around 2:30pm, and started traveling towards Gerlach. It began to rain right around 3pm, and though I never found out if they shut down Exodus at that point, boy did we feel lucky to have escaped. Luckily the rain didn’t last long, though. We stopped off in Empire (I think) to go pee and make sure our yurt was still tied down properly to the roof of the minivan, and then slogged on til Reno, where we stopped for dinner at the Black Bear Diner (same place we’d stopped the previous year). We ate some diner food, changed into our clean clothes, called our family, and got on the road again.
We made it home with no further incidents, tired and discombobulated but happy. We relieved our babysitter, took that first wonderful shower, and tumbled into our comfortable, quiet, bed with grateful hearts.
And now, to finish this long series of posts, the summary/wrap up/lessons learned bit:
- Never assume. It makes an ASS out of U and ME. And no one likes feeling like an ass.
- Decorating is fun. It’s even more fun when you go big with a theme and that theme becomes the organizing structure for creative activity.
- Don’t be afraid to try doing things you don’t know how to do, even when they’re large-scale projects that threaten to be overwhelming in their complexity. And don’t back down to simpler creative projects just because you’ve “never done anything like this before”. Go big or go home.
- Don’t wait for someone else to “save” you from difficult tasks. Find the help you need, or trust that you alone are enough.
- Be respectful of existing leadership, but do not be afraid to lead yourself. There is no “us” and “them”, there is only “us” and “whoever cares the most about this can take the lead”.
- Coordination skills are not enough; you need some high charisma too if you want to lead a team to successful completion of a project (especially when it’s a volunteer one).
- Many people mean well. But only a certain kind of person combines good intentions with follow-through action. Cultivate and appreciate those latter kind of folk—they are worth their weight in rubies.
- Existing relationships are the best source of help on a project, but you have to build and cultivate those relationships ahead of time before asking for help.
- Be open to help from unexpected places. Allow people to gift their time and effort and be appreciative of those gifts. That appreciation itself is a gift.
- You can’t work all of the people (or all of the projects) all of the time. Season with leisure and downtime or everything will break.
- Humor and enthusiasm are terrific tools and should not be underrated (or misplaced).
- Start things twice as early as you think you need to. Seriously. Some last-minute push is fun; too much is stressful and uncomfortable.
- Double-check your travel arrangements, and then be willing to be flexible when things change (as they invariably will).
- There is nothing else like the awesome thrill you get from working really hard on something for a long time and then finally seeing it manifest (and appreciated by others). A girl could totally get addicted to that thrill.
- You can’t see/hear/play with/experience it all. But you can be present to and satisfied with what you do experience.
- I really like working with fabric (which is weird, for a girl who never learned how to sew or knit or embroider or weave or any of those other traditional textile arts). I want to do more found-fabric collage pieces.
- Being a Temple Guardian was a really satisfying job for me, because it combined both spiritual and social modes, and allowed for me to express many of my best skills.
- Burner writers are awesome. Find more of them, and connect more. These are my peeps.
- Sweet cold treats are awesome in the desert. Every time.=
- Dancing hard with fun props to loud music in the company of lots of other people is one of my favorite things. Must repeat often.
- Drumming with others is also a lot of fun and really satisfying. Must repeat often.
- Adventuring with a simpatico buddy who is open to new experiences and likes the same things you do is extra fun. Must repeat often.
- Bad times pass, eventually. Just hang on.
- Always remember to dilute the hot water in your shower bag with cold water before you use it.
- Giant interactive art is awesome in the desert. Every time. And every time I wish I could see/experience more of it.
- Burners really get and appreciate the Fly Your Freak Flag High project. I need to keep going with this and also to find a way to up the ante/change things up for next year.
- Big fire is big awesome, but sharing big experience with significant others is what makes it truly satisfying.
- Bring jumper cables.
- The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Flexibility, patience and a positive attitude are key.