Imagine Woodstock, as designed by urban planners, with set design from Mad Max.
This isn’t exactly like Burning Man—truthfully, nothing is, but it will at least give you a mental picture to start with.

Burning Man is a city of participatory art that rises out of the Black Rock Desert for one week a year. For one week, it is among the largest cities in Nevada, with a population of 45,000, at least three radio stations, an airport—and not a single store.

Photo courtesy of Amber Barger

It is almost impossible to know where to begin in describing Burning Man because everyone’s experience is different. Unlike a festival, where a few people put on entertainment for the masses, at Burning Man everyone is encouraged to participate, and most do. One minute you may be giving out cold lemonade to the neighbors, the next waiting in line for the delicious bacon being fried up by the Bacon Research Institute (complete with Powerpoint slides on the walls detailing the results of last year’s research—apparently Miss Piggy would make the best bacon.) Some people get up at dawn to do yoga and take advantage of the steam bath at the Heebeegeebee Hearlers, while others party until well past dawn in 90 foot dance domes. Nearly every camp has some shtick, and it may take hours to walk only a few hundred yards if you stop to drink every drink, jump on every trampoline, and engage with everyone who talks to you on the street.

Very little is provided for you at Burning Man. When you arrive, the streets have been placed by the Department of Public Works (a hard-core crew who work in the desert for months before and after Burning Man setting up street signs, mapping out roads, and then cleaning every speck of trash, down to stray feathers, out of the dust). Banks of Porta-potties are placed at regular intervals, but each participant must provide their own food, shelter, water, and anything else they might need for seven days in the sun. Radical self-reliance is the rule here. Sure, if you forget something you may very well be able to get it from your neighbor—but there are no guarantees, and no neighborhood stores to pick up those last minute necessities. In fact, the only places that accept money at Burning Man are Arctica (the ice truck) and the Center Camp Café, where you can get your caffeine needs met (but no water; and if you want free coffee, you can also go down the street to Kahona camp, where a group from Hawaii is roasting its own freshly picked beans every morning).

Many participants at Burning Man are scientists, geeks, or IT people. One camp sets up an “ask the physicist” hour, and another gives away “open source” SMS messages. Practically every camp has its own space-usage plan made in Google Sketch-up. But most of the technology is devoted to sound, construction, and fire. Sound camps blast away, some all night, with giant sound systems that have to be brought in piece by piece by individual members. Ingenious construction methods go into keeping cool and defeating the wind, from centrifuge packaging used to cover a shade structure to more geodesic domes than you can imagine. One group has developed open source, slotted furniture that packs up flat, so you can download the plans, cut your own, and have a fancy bike rack or bench to make you feel right at home. And the fire—car- and bike- mounted fire, stationary fire, dancing fire, colored rockets, fire in art pieces, carbon flowers spitting fire, parachuting fire, and just plain enormous fires when the large wooden sculptures burn. If there is a way to make fire better or more interesting, you can bet someone is already working on it.

But fundamentally, despite all the flash, Burning Man is about art, participatory art. Some of it is mobile, like the three-story Victorian house/art car called the Neverwas Haul , and some of it is incorporated into the urban part of Burning Man, but some of the most impressive pieces can be found in the “deep playa,” out around the giant wooden figure week (hence the name). Many artists and artist collectives spend their entire year creating haunting, beautiful pieces.

Out beyond “The Wedge”, a 30-foot tall astro-turf covered slide, is “A Nest of Recollection” , a twelve foot high, padded, human-sized bird’s nest made of driftwood, perfect for an early morning moment of reflection.

If you hear about Burning Man in the popular media, you may hear about drugs and nudity, and yes, those options are available, but the truth is that Burning Man is an enormous, diverse population, with cooks, artists, children, dancers, doctors, DJs, and practically anyone else you can think of. It’s not any one thing to everyone, and what is beautiful is that you are not only able, you are encouraged, to bring with you exactly what you want. Your experience is up to you, and in general, what you want to find you will.

Visit Burning Man if you are interested in an intense experience, if you are open to chance encounters and serendipity, if you want to do something, not just sit back and experience.

Don’t visit Burning Man if you can’t stand heat and constant dust, if you want everything handed to you, if you need everything to always be just so, or if all you want to do is watch. This is an environment that will constantly challenge you, constantly push you—but in the end, that’s sort of the point.