When Larry Harvey and a few friends burned an eight-foot-tall wooden figure on Baker Beach in San Francisco during the summer of 1986, they unknowingly started more than a single fire. Burning Man has become an annual festival that creates its own city on the playa of Black Rock Desert in Nevada over the week prior to and including the Labor Day weekend.

For several years before 1986, Baker Beach had been the scene of other summer art parties hosted by sculptor Mary Grauberger, a friend of Harvey’s girlfriend. Harvey had attended some of these gatherings and decided to stage his own when Grauberger lost interest.

Harvey asked Jerry James to make the first eight-foot-tall effigy, which Harvey says was burned as an "act of radical self-expression." The next year, the effigy was almost twice as tall, and in 1988, it had more than doubled in size again, nearing 40 feet in height. Attendance at the event also grew.

In 1990, the police stepped in to stop the summer burning. And the Cacophony Society, spearheaded by John Law, who had been involved in the event since 1989, proposed moving the Burning Man ritual to Black Rock Desert and Labor Day weekend. Since then, the festival has seen phenomenal growth, with 36,500 people attending in 2005.

According to organizers, "Burning Man is an annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance." Black Rock City (BRC) is the name given to the community that appears to spring up virtually overnight on a site 120 miles north of Reno. It occupies a normally uninhabited desert playa, or prehistoric dry lake bed. After each festival, a team of volunteers remains for several weeks, cleaning up and making sure that no evidence of the community remains.

For the short time it exists, Black Rock City has a well defined layout. It is shaped like two-thirds of a circle, one and a half miles in diameter. The Burning Man complex is at the center, with avenues extending outward like spokes and concentric arcs forming cross-streets.

An area around the complex and the open third of the circle are reserved for art installations. The innermost arc streets tend to be the busiest and usually are reserved for theme camps.

Center Camp is situated on the midline of Black Rock City facing the Burning Man complex. It encompasses important services, such as First Aid and Playa Information. It also is the main meeting place for festival participants, containing art installations, a large seating area and performance spaces.

Participants receive a map of Black Rock City upon arrival at the festival.

Burners

Because the purpose of Burning Man is to form a temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression, people who come to spectate rather than participate are frowned upon. True participants are known as burners.

There are no rules for how burners must behave or express themselves, except the rules that serve to protect the health, safety and experience of the community at large. Instead, each burner decides what and how he or she will contribute.

Since 1996, Burning Man founder Larry Harvey has given a theme to each festival in an effort to tie individual contributions together in a meaningful way. Burners are encouraged to interpret the theme through a large-scale art installation, a theme camp, gifts brought to share with other individuals, costumes, etc.

Themes have included "Fertility," "Time," "Hell," "Outer Space," "The Body," "The Floating World," "Beyond Belief," "The Vault of Heaven" and "Psyche." Sculptures, interactive installations, theme camps, music, performance and guerrilla street theater are the forms most commonly used to convey a theme.

Theme camps, based on the year’s theme or their own, are designed to engage other burners. They can be both entertaining and useful. Some popular examples have been: "Kidsville," aimed at amusing burners’ children; "The Pancake Playhouse," flipping free flapjacks to the sounds of soft rock; and "BRCPO," a post office parody moving messages between the festival and the outside world.

Cars are to be used only when entering or leaving Black Rock City or in case of an emergency. Once participants arrive at the festival, they are expected to leave their cars or other motor vehicles parked at their camps. Black Rock City is designed to be pedestrian friendly, so it is easily navigated on foot or by bicycle. However, burners bringing bicycles should be forewarned that the alkali dust of the playa can damage bikes that are not properly prepared or thoroughly cleaned afterward.

An exception to the no-driving rule is the art car. An art car is a car, truck, bus or other vehicle that has been radically and creatively altered, becoming a sort of art installation on wheels. It must receive a special permit from the Black Rock DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles) in order to drive on site.

Many art cars have high passenger capacities and will give participants a ride around the playa. This is not a requirement of their permit, though, so no one should expect or demand a ride from an art car driver.

And for burners who run short of supplies or sundries, there is daily shuttle bus service to the Empire General Store in nearby Gerlach, a town of fewer than 500 residents. Tickets may be purchased at Center Camp.

Black Rock City itself is essentially a cash-free zone. The shuttle service is one of the few examples of commerce allowed to operate at the festival. Another is the company that services the event’s 400 portable toilets, which may also charge participants for emptying their RVs’ waste tanks.

The only supplies sold on site are the ice and coffee available at Center Camp. Profits from ice sales go directly to the towns of Gerlach and Empire, while coffee sales fund the operation of Center Camp.

Because no food or material goods are sold at the festival, burners are urged to bring all the food, water, tools and camping supplies that they will need for the duration of their stay. An underground barter economy exists, with participants exchanging goods or favors, but it is discouraged by event organizers.

Burners also are expected to take away everything they brought onto the site, because Black Rock City does not have garbage disposal. But there is a "Recycling Camp" on site that accepts donations of aluminum cans and passes them along to Gerlach High School.

Although some long-time participants believe the festival has become too structured and controlled, others admit that rules are necessary in any community the size that Black Rock City has become.

"Burning Man is an open society of activists," state organizers. "And the rules we promulgate (mostly relating to fire in our campground, the role of the automobile, and care for the environment) are aimed at ensuring the survival of every individual in a public world that all of us join in creating."

Burning Man is scheduled for August 28 to September 4, 2006, with the effigy going up in flames on Saturday, September 2. Festival theme is "Hope and Fear: The Future."

British Columbia travel writer Toni Dabbs is a regular contributor to The Cultured Traveler.