Top Five Lessons for Next Year

5) Bring a snazzy camera & look for the art in everything
After seeing all of the amazing pictures on Flickr and getting my own crap night time shots, I want a new camera. I want one that’s going to inspire me to seek out things to photograph. I want one that can capture the whole other world that happens at night. I want to get a panoramic from the center of the playa, where you are surrounded by 200 degrees of things to do. I want to remember the stranger who saw me struggling with the 6 bags of ice I mistakenly calculated to fit in my bike basket and let me borrow his wagon to get my things back to camp. I want my own picture of the double rainbow that elicited cheers across Black Rock CIty. I want more vivid pics of the sick and wrong, but oh so fun, madness of the Thunderdome directly out of Mad Max, where random people faced up against each other in battle while spectators hollered from their perches around the domed jungle gym cage. I want to capture the laughter between new friends, the contentment of just being, the pride of creativity and construction and the reflection that comes from being in the middle of nowhere. I wonder if I can find that camera at Best Buy.

4) Bring gifts
I mentioned this before but gifts will be a necessity for me next time. I’m thinking trinkets. I don’t know what they’ll be yet but I’m sure I will think of some brilliant idea at the last hour and stay up all night for days making them. There will be less pressure since I get the concept now. I now know I won’t have to worry about making hundreds of them and I won’t have to worry about it being something no one’s ever done before. I’ll at least bring a water spritzer infused with peppermint because just that simple gesture from a stranger on a hot afternoon was lovely. The whole place was like that. I can go day to day here at home shutting everyone out and have everyone else do the same. But in BRC, people build theme camps to bring you in. As you walk down the road, you pass signs offering lemonade and sunscreen reapplications. Burners call out offering icy bellinis or a ride on their art cars. I guess it’s not so bad letting those walls down once in a while.

3) Leave bug spray at home
You won’t need it; there are no bugs at all. Except for the ones that get trapped in a trailer on the trip out and think they’ve found freedom once they’re in BRC. I think I saw one fly all week. Cassy saw an earwig who was on it’s walk of death, trudging through the alkalined-laced dirt with the sun beating down on it. She felt very bad about it’s impending death but all I could think was, if bugs choose to not be out here…how’s it a good idea that we’re out here?

2) Learn how to tell time by the sun’s location
…because playa time is difficult to measure. You can hop onto an art car that’s just going up two-ish blocks because you think it’ll take a quick minute. But then you end up more like 6 blocks away and on the way back, you jump on a oversized swing, fall on your face and stop by the porta potties. So by the time you find your way back to your friends who were partying at a camp, you discover they left because you were gone too long and they didn’t know when you’d be back.

And the number one lesson for next year…..

1) Don’t blow your nose
I was doing fine up until Thursday but I made the mistake of blowing my nose. I hadn’t realized that I had just destroyed the barrier my body had instinctively formed to protect me from the elements. It was my secret weapon that had kept me well though I was running on 4-5 hours of sleep a night. After that, my nose started to run, I had a progressively worsening cough and on Saturday I was unconscious most of the day as I think I was sick from heat exhaustion. And since then, 3 weeks after getting home, I’ve been suffering from bronchitus that near made me addicted to Nyquil and has stopped me from getting a solid night’s sleep in days. After all the discomfort, I finally decided to go to the doctor who prescribed me every type of medication, including all over the counter remedies, that she could. But after all that, the only thing I took away was that I learned I have a bronchitus that can’t be cured with antibiotics and that I’m viciously allergic to amoxicillin; so much so that I break out in hives when taking it and I have to test my swallowing capabilities to make sure I won’t stop breathing because my air passageways are swollen closed. Other than that…I’m just peachy keen but will never blow my nose again in Black Rock City.