Burning Man draws record crowd

BLACK ROCK DESERT, Nev. – As jugglers danced with hoops and spirals of fire, vehicles belched flames and hypnotic drums echoed through the night, more than 35,000 costumed revelers ritually burned a 40-foot neon-and-wooden icon of a man deep in the Nevada desert.

The 19th-annual Burning Man festival, a counterculture event in one of the remotest places in the United States, was back this year with record crowds.

“It’s an emotional experience,” said Silvie, of San Diego, who would give only her first name. “There’s a reverence here.”

Saturday night’s burn, 120 miles north of Reno, was relatively uneventful after a series of tragedies a year ago. Federal Bureau of Land Management spokesman Jamie Thompson said this year’s event ran smoothly with no major accidents. Drug arrests and citations also were down, preliminary reports showed.

Last year, two people died and four others were hospitalized following accidents with aircraft and the Mad-Max-style “mutant vehicles” that roam the desert.

The annual fantasy event grew out of San Francisco’s bohemian street theater nearly 20 years ago, when a group of artists and spectators spontaneously burned an 8-foot wooden figure on a Bay Area beach. The event has been growing ever since.

While many people were packing up and leaving the desert Sunday, others stayed to burn an elaborate Temple of Stars, laid out in a quarter-mile crescent, later Sunday night.

Many were awed by this year’s temple, created by artist David Best.

By tradition, revelers leave the names of departed loved ones and various remembrances to be burned in the temple. Many visitors cried while composing their gifts, and some collapsed into the arms of others. For many, torching the temple has become the centerpiece of the annual festival, a more intimate spiritual event than the rave-partylike immolation of the man icon.

“To burn it, it’s like giving it to a higher force. It’s like an offering,” said Fred Dickson, who helped build the temple.