The Miracle of Poles
Published Sunday, August 27, 2006 by Bones.
There was a Burning Man miracle this morning. It happened at 10:17am, on Saturday, August 26, 2006.
The night before we ran into a challenge. We took our big tent out and set it up and were dismayed to find that 2 of our poles were missing. The pole bag was there in my hand in the dusty backyard, the tent was tall but droopy, half up. The tent bag was on the bench empty, and Lu was looking at me with wide, sad eyes.
I seemed to remember the tent poles being frayed at the end of the previous year's time in Black Rock City. I seemed to remember that they were useless when we took the tent down the year before. And there all over the nylon of the sad, poleless tent, was the proof of the desert wind. The tent was finely seasoned with the grit of the playa. But the poles were no where to be seen.
We went back upstairs where I proceed to freak out because no camping or sporting goods store in the city or nearby carried replacement poles.
"But you're REI!" I said to the woman on the phone. But the only option from her was ordering them specifically. We didn't have time for that. It was Friday night, we were leaving on Monday. We called three Targets until we found one that had the sized tent we needed. I dreaded the fact that it was our second trip to Target in one day. They were holding a tent for us in the Electronics Dept. because there was no one in Sporting Goods.
Thirty minutes later we arrived in the store, but there was no tent in the Electronics Dept. That's because we ended up going to the wrong store, so somewhere in a Target nearby, there is a tent mysteriously in an Electronics Dept. But we still found a good tent. We bought it and brought it home. I opened it up and was delighted to see--against all odds--that all the poles were included in this brand new tent.
We slept, eventually, and then woke up at 7:30am to take the car in to be serviced to make sure it was ready for the desert conditions.
In the morning at 10:17am, we finished cleaning up from breakfast and went out to the back yard where our old, crappy, poleless tent was half set-up in the morning shade. It was droopy and dusty, full of the silt from the playa from the year before. It had a front door and a back door and I was sad that our new tent didn't have that.
We grabbed the tent and went to take it down, and there below the floor was a second, mysterious pole bag, and in the bag were the two poles we didn't find the night before. Lu and I nearly fell over with laughter and joy. Of course, we had to return the new tent and we were shocked we didn't find the poles the day before when we were looking for them.
It could have been one of two things. Either we simply didn't see them the night before or the poles were gone, thrown away like I remember and a miracle occurred. I held in my hand an empty pole bag. The poles where no where to be found. But yet, there in the shady morning sun amid our unbelieving laughter was the poles we thought vanished.
At night as we slept and dreamed, poles formed out of leftover playa and discarded seeds in our back yard. As we slept, poles grew beneath our tent, bagged.
Call it whatever you want. But as far as we are concerned, it is a Burning Man Miracle. And the best part is, we know it is the first of many.
The night before we ran into a challenge. We took our big tent out and set it up and were dismayed to find that 2 of our poles were missing. The pole bag was there in my hand in the dusty backyard, the tent was tall but droopy, half up. The tent bag was on the bench empty, and Lu was looking at me with wide, sad eyes.
I seemed to remember the tent poles being frayed at the end of the previous year's time in Black Rock City. I seemed to remember that they were useless when we took the tent down the year before. And there all over the nylon of the sad, poleless tent, was the proof of the desert wind. The tent was finely seasoned with the grit of the playa. But the poles were no where to be seen.
We went back upstairs where I proceed to freak out because no camping or sporting goods store in the city or nearby carried replacement poles.
"But you're REI!" I said to the woman on the phone. But the only option from her was ordering them specifically. We didn't have time for that. It was Friday night, we were leaving on Monday. We called three Targets until we found one that had the sized tent we needed. I dreaded the fact that it was our second trip to Target in one day. They were holding a tent for us in the Electronics Dept. because there was no one in Sporting Goods.
Thirty minutes later we arrived in the store, but there was no tent in the Electronics Dept. That's because we ended up going to the wrong store, so somewhere in a Target nearby, there is a tent mysteriously in an Electronics Dept. But we still found a good tent. We bought it and brought it home. I opened it up and was delighted to see--against all odds--that all the poles were included in this brand new tent.
We slept, eventually, and then woke up at 7:30am to take the car in to be serviced to make sure it was ready for the desert conditions.
In the morning at 10:17am, we finished cleaning up from breakfast and went out to the back yard where our old, crappy, poleless tent was half set-up in the morning shade. It was droopy and dusty, full of the silt from the playa from the year before. It had a front door and a back door and I was sad that our new tent didn't have that.
We grabbed the tent and went to take it down, and there below the floor was a second, mysterious pole bag, and in the bag were the two poles we didn't find the night before. Lu and I nearly fell over with laughter and joy. Of course, we had to return the new tent and we were shocked we didn't find the poles the day before when we were looking for them.
It could have been one of two things. Either we simply didn't see them the night before or the poles were gone, thrown away like I remember and a miracle occurred. I held in my hand an empty pole bag. The poles where no where to be found. But yet, there in the shady morning sun amid our unbelieving laughter was the poles we thought vanished.
At night as we slept and dreamed, poles formed out of leftover playa and discarded seeds in our back yard. As we slept, poles grew beneath our tent, bagged.
Call it whatever you want. But as far as we are concerned, it is a Burning Man Miracle. And the best part is, we know it is the first of many.
Release
Published Thursday, August 24, 2006 by Bones.
I am surrounded by luxury. 2 computers. Lights and electricity wired through the walls. Music, movies, newspapers, knowledge at my fingertips. Wine. Glass in the pane of the window beside me. A phone I can dial to reach anyone I know. The fluffy pillows, the firm mattress, the soft sheets of the sturdy bed beside me is majestic. We are giving all of it up. We are giving it up for malaria and moonrises and utter uncertainty, and it feels so good.
Shifts
Published by Bones.
There's an interesting dichotomy going on in my brain right now. On the one hand, I can feeling life speeding up. We are only days away from departure and we still have quite a bit to accomplish before we're gone. On the other hand, though, I can already sense my priorities and perspective shifting and slowing.
Four days from now I will be without a job, and that is a huge change from my everyday life. Then it's Black Rock City followed by the beaches of Thailand and both of those places could not be more different from each other, and from the world I'm living in right now. It is incredibly exciting. Things are going to build and build and build into a frenzy of packing and preparing and plans only to come to screeching halt the second we pull our packed car from the curb and hit the road on the first stage of our incredible adventure.
Instead of giving my time to a corporation to be transformed into money, time instead becomes all mine. Instead of being beholden to the clock to wake me up groggy, to tell me when to eat lunch, to mark the moment of freedom at the end of the day, to dictate the optimum time for slumber, instead of all that, we will live according to the rhythms of our bodies and of the natural world around us. We are breaking out of routine life and leaping from one glorious moment to the next. Next week those moments will be filled with unspeakably powerful art, the biting desert wind, the blazing sun. The following weeks those moments will be filled with the salty bliss of ocean, the jarring strangeness of a new culture, the sodden sweat of humidity and the deep serenity of weeks without work.
I consider myself a very lucky man to have found a woman who loves all of this stuff just as much as I do. We are going to have a lot of fun, and I cannot wait to get started.
Four days from now I will be without a job, and that is a huge change from my everyday life. Then it's Black Rock City followed by the beaches of Thailand and both of those places could not be more different from each other, and from the world I'm living in right now. It is incredibly exciting. Things are going to build and build and build into a frenzy of packing and preparing and plans only to come to screeching halt the second we pull our packed car from the curb and hit the road on the first stage of our incredible adventure.
Instead of giving my time to a corporation to be transformed into money, time instead becomes all mine. Instead of being beholden to the clock to wake me up groggy, to tell me when to eat lunch, to mark the moment of freedom at the end of the day, to dictate the optimum time for slumber, instead of all that, we will live according to the rhythms of our bodies and of the natural world around us. We are breaking out of routine life and leaping from one glorious moment to the next. Next week those moments will be filled with unspeakably powerful art, the biting desert wind, the blazing sun. The following weeks those moments will be filled with the salty bliss of ocean, the jarring strangeness of a new culture, the sodden sweat of humidity and the deep serenity of weeks without work.
I consider myself a very lucky man to have found a woman who loves all of this stuff just as much as I do. We are going to have a lot of fun, and I cannot wait to get started.