On "You'll Never Capture It All" by AVD 3 ****

Apparently I'd already read this book when it was a set of blog entries. I discovered this in three ways. One, when the writer told me about the book, he noted that I'd already read it. Two, even though I didn't remember most of it, I came across a reference to my reading it (as a blog) about halfway through the book. And three, I remembered the description of the traffic at the very end of the book.

Now all that said, I enjoyed the book immensely. It's a description of one year at the Burning Man festival that occurs every year out on the high desert out West, a festival I've never attended and likely never will. I can't say that much of what is described appeals to me--most importantly, the dust, but also the inability to wash for a week or to essentially have the things that make life easy for a week. This isn't camping; it's worse, since it's out on the desert among tens of thousands of people. That said, the art work, the music, the faux town that pops up for a short while--those things would appeal to me, but probably not the weeklong, all-night party
. I'd be a day tripper, likely, if I went--preferably not on the day the man burns, at the very end of the festival, when the most people are there. No interest in that.

Nevertheless, reading about the experience and why some folks get so high from it is definitely the way to go for someone curious about the event but not curious (or brave) enough to go.

Interestingly, the book documents a year in which Burning Man made the national news--namely, the year the man--a giant wood sculpture that is burned on the last night--was burned by some chaos maker only a couple of days into the festival. In that way, one gets the scoop on how some folks felt about that event as it happened.