Once we bid farewell to the sunrise and the playa, we came down from the DJ booth and dragged ourselves back to camp and to the flurry of final camp breakdown and packing the car. I was exhausted by the time I finished packing everything back up again, but Isis really wanted to leave by 8am Sunday morning to beat the crazy exodus traffic. So we powered through, bolstered by a cool random hot air balloon sighting right above our camp and a final stop at Center Camp for coffee for Isis. Then we began the slow crawl out through Black Rock City and the dead zone between BRC and the highway.
We got out without too much trouble (Isis had been right), and stopped in the closest town (Gerlach) to get a preliminary carwash. As we headed back towards highway 80 and Reno, the euphoria of the previous night and the adrenaline of packing and leaving ebbed away and I started falling asleep at the wheel—so we pulled over in one of the other small towns en route and found a shady place to park and nap for a little bit. We slept for maybe an hour, and then roused ourselves to get back on the road.
The rest of the trip home was long and tiring but relatively uneventful. We stopped in Truckee for gas and lunch (we had sushi in an air conditioned mall restaurant, which was a bizarre contrast to what we'd just been living), and I think a couple of other stops to pee and stretch, and eventually made it back home around 8 o’clock at night. I unloaded Isis’ stuff for her at her house, and then quickly unloaded most of my stuff into a pile to deal with in the morning. The boys and Josh were away at a gaming con until the following day, so I had a lovely, quiet and relatively clean house all to myself, which was great. I took a long hot bubble bath (which I dozed off in briefly), then I finally got to go to bed in nice clean sheets in my very own comfy bed and even though I missed being at Burning Man, that made it a glorious homecoming.
Epilogue
It took me over a week to recover from my time at Burning Man—and by recover I mean get enough physical energy back to resume any kind of normal schedule. In the week or so that followed my return home, I was incredibly sluggish and sleepy, and took multiple naps when I could. (Yes, I am blessed to be the captain of my own schedule and able to do that!) I kept remarking on how tired I was, and how intense my dreams were, so I think it wasn’t just my physical self that needed some rejuvenation, but also my emotional/spiritual self that needed some quiet time to nurse the new baby inner transformations into strength. (It’s also taken me a really long time to finish this incredibly long blog post about the whole thing, but hopefully it’ll be a good record and reminder of not only things that happened, in all its chaotic story glory, but also of all the epiphanies, realizations and gifts I want to carry forward.)
Now, almost two weeks later, I feel like I am starting to settle into a new equilibrium, a new sense of self. It sounds a little cliché maybe, or a little “woo-woo”, but I do feel like I have experienced a rite of passage, an inner transformation from fear into freedom, from little to big. I feel expanded. I feel less bound up in fears and anxieties and old patterns and more comfortable with, understanding about, and appreciative of my own unique freaky fabulous and fun self. My energy is different, calmer, steadier and more joyful (and some people have even noticed and commented on it). In gamer terms, I’d have to say that this is what it must feel like to “level up” in wisdom. I know that as I get farther away from this self-precipitated transformative experience, things will continue to shift and settle and present me with even more opportunities for reflection and pattern-identification and wisdom, and I look forward to that.
So in summary, and for those who were too impatient to read the whole long detailed ramble of my recollections, I present:
My Top 10 Takeaways from Burning Man
- Set Your Intention(s)
- Welcoming Is An Important Piece of Community
- Appreciate Others’ Self-Expression Loudly & Often
- Women are Awesome, and I Need More Women More Consistently In My Life
- Think Big
- Release Fear and Mediocrity
- Be a Supernova
- Serendipity is On My Side
- Everything is Equally Delightful
- Fire is Really, Really Delightful