Ok - this has been a few weeks coming. But I'm finally making good on our little pre-Burning Man agreement, Laura: a picture of me on the playa in trade for a picture of you at your wedding with Garrett.


Thanks to Aqua for sending the shot...

This should also shut up anybody else who has been complaining that after looking through all my pictures from this year's Burning Man, there wasn't a single one in there of me in burner gear.

I also have to add that NO - this is NOT MY HAT. And yes, there's a story behind it.

I was hanging out at the Burning Man Ranger Station, late one night, and a young man with waaaayyyy too much eyeliner was wearing this hat - and when he saw my coat, he exclaimed "Ohhhhh... look at that! Your coat matches my hat!". After which he promptly removed it from his head, popped it onto mine, arranged it for the best look and insisted that someone take a picture. Ergo - the shot above.

So there.

On the Monday after the Burn, one of my burner friends handed me a little dusty green disposable Fuji camera he had found laying on the playa.

Since by that time most people had already left the desert in the Exodus, and the Burning Man-run "Lost and Found" was in the process of being disassembled, I decided to take the camera home, get the film developed and see what was on it. Maybe this would help in tracking down the rightful owners.

Risky though - I know. With all the crazyness that goes down on the playa, I half expected to get arrested at the Long's upon picking the prints back up... Alas, it was not to be. The stuff turned out to be actually pretty tame. Just burner snapshots.

And yet - to me, those 18 images really captured a seldomly-seen aspect of the event. Fun. Playful. Whimsical. And even a bit innocent.



Given that the playa works in wonderful and mysterious ways, I'm hoping to find the owners of the camera and return their memories to them - and in some way maybe bribe the Universe into giving back a very special beautiful blue glass ring I had owned only for a couple of days before the playa claimed it.

This year at Burning Man, I wanted to do something interactive so I had the idea to put up a mailbox at my camp.

I painted the motto of the event "Hope and Fear" in glowlight paint on both sides, mounted black lights around it I would turn on at night to make the box visible - and waited.

Although I wasn't camped at a particularly busy street, miraciously, every day and night my little box would fill up with new and surprising messages. These here are some of my favorites, and encompass the entire wealth of the beautiful, insightful, crazy, wise, incoherent, and wildly humerous souls that make the event such an awesome experience. (A full archive of all 30 of those favorite scanned messages is here.)