In today’s #PlayaTales, our hero writes down *his* origin story for going to That Thing In The Desert…
I like origin stories. That is the beginning of my good stories – the beginning.
So how did I get here? My journey started in 1998 at an automotive assembly plant somewhere in Texas. I was an IT guy working third shift when the plant didn’t run third shift, so I spent a lot of my time doing maintenance and fixing imaginary problems. But during the downtime, I would read. We had a breakroom with tons of magazines of all the various topics relevant to geeks in the late 90s. One of these was Wired Magazine. And in that pile was the November 1996 edition with the headline “Greetings from Burning Man”.
“Like Wicker Man?” I asked the other third shift guy – who also introduced me to Art Bell – shrugged his shoulders. And so I started to read and immediately fell in love! These were all the weird people I had spent my life looking for! They were tech focused but they were embracing some kind of neo-tribal vibe. This wasn’t founded by hippies but by anarchists! And they were gathering together in the middle of the desert hours away from civilization.
Unfortunately, this was just a dream. I wasn’t going to be able to go because my life wasn’t in a place to allow that. But I filed it away. Maybe one day… like so many other of my dreams.
Fast forward to 2004 – I was sitting around a table playing a tabletop RPG in Las Vegas. We were chatting with a friend who was telling us about a camping trip that she had been on and how they were planning on making it “like Burning Man”. Immediately, I wanted to be a part of it. It would be a few months before I understood what a “regional” event was or how much that event would change my life. I was one step closer to going.