Burning Man took off like a house on fire
Larry Harvey’s whimsical decision to erect a giant wooden figure in the desert, then burn it to the ground, led to the popular, long-running counterculture celebration known as Burning Man.
Longtime friend Stuart Mangrum posted on the Burning Man Project’s website that Harvey did not believe in any sort of existence after death. ‘‘Now that he’s gone, let’s take the liberty of contradicting him, and keep his memory alive in our hearts, our thoughts, and our actions. As he would have wished it, let us always Burn the Man.’’
The creator of the annual weeklong festival in northern Nevada’s Black Rock Desert died aged 70 after suffering a massive stroke earlier in April. The Burning Man organisation did not disclose his prognosis, saying only that he was getting round-the-clock care.
Burning Man takes place the week before Labor Day, in early September, attracting some 70,000 people who pay anywhere from
US$425 to $1200 a ticket to travel to a dry lake bed east of Reno, where temperatures can routinely reach
38 degrees Celsius during the summer. They must carry in their own food, build their own makeshift community, and engage in whatever interests them.
On the gathering’s penultimate day, the giant effigy – or Man, as it is known – is set ablaze during a raucous, joyful celebration.
‘‘A city in the desert. A culture of possibility. A network of dreamers and doers,’’ is how the gathering is described on Burning Man’s website.
An ‘‘esoteric mix of pagan fire ritual and sci-fi Dada circus where some paint their bodies, bang drums, dance naked and wear costumes that would draw stares in a Mardi Gras parade’’, is how the Associated Press once described it.
While tickets now sell out immediately, Harvey described in a
2007 interview how he had much more modest intentions when he launched Burning Man on San Francisco’s Baker Beach one summer day in 1986.
‘‘I called a friend and said, ‘Let’s go to the beach and burn a man’,’’ he told the website Green Living. ‘‘And he said, ‘Can you say that again?’ And I did and we did it.’’
While Harvey would speak frequently about Burning Man in the years that followed, he would reveal little about himself and it was often hard to discern truth from fiction.
Born in Portland, Oregon, on January 11, 1948, he believed he was conceived in the back of a Chevrolet by parents who abandoned him soon after his birth.
His brother, Stewart, said the two were adopted by farmers ‘‘Shorty’’ and Katherine Harvey and grew up outside Portland. The brothers, who were not related by blood, were extremely close.
Harvey meticulously oversaw every detail of Burning Man as it grew, and laid out 10 ‘‘principles’’ for those attending, including interacting and sharing unselfishly with one another, developing selfreliance and, after the event’s conclusion, leaving the desert landscape unspoiled.
Although known for retaining its joyful celebrative atmosphere as it grew, the event occasionally had its problems.
In 2017, a man ran into Burning Man’s flames, suffered burns over almost all of his body and died. In
1996, three people were injured when a drunken driver ran over their tent. That same year a man was killed when his motorcycle collided with a van carrying people to the festival.
In 2007, a prankster set fire to Burning Man four days early and it had to be frantically rebuilt while the man was charged with arson. –
‘‘I called a friend and said, ‘Let’s go to the beach and burn a man’ ... and we did it.’’