Clinging on? ... the Burning Man festival. Photograph: Christine Finn
This year, the Burning Man was set alight ahead of the closing night of the Nevada festival. Luckily he was rescued from the flames to go up in smoke once more four days later. Even so, despite the build-up and the serious pyrotechnics, and my excellent vantage point from the top of a ship-shaped art bus, I found Saturday's big moment less affecting than Monday night's illicit burn.
The act that saw a performance artist charged with arson was something spontaneous, especially for a first-timer. But inevitably, this early climax prompted an anti-climax on the official burning night.
Festival veterans hark back to the old days of Burning Man, when stuff just happened. It was edgy and often dangerous; it was just seen, or just missed. It was spread by word of mouth, and captured in a few images on film, or half-remembered as a form of Bay Area art mythology.
No longer a small gig on a beach, Burning Man is now the world's biggest counterculture arts festival. This year more than 47,000 people attended, all paying an average of $200 a ticket.
For your bucks you get one hell of an art show, rooted in community art. It is almost survivalist. But you can buy ice and coffee, and park your RV. It is a city that arises out of the dust each year, but also has a zip code, and now a link on Google Earth. And all this, say those who don't attend any more, is spoiling the show. How can this be an art community?
This year's theme was the Green Man and the Man was perched atop a controversial pavilion of eco-technology. And nature hardly disappointed, with dust storms, a lunar eclipse, a meteor shower, and a double rainbow over camps already quivering with feel-good neo-hippy activity.
But back to Saturday night. Even as the Burning Man embers were attracting popcorn-makers and marshmallow toasters, and ravers were enhancing the psychedelic moment, down the playa was art which still had the "wow" factor for me.
Crude Awakening was a protest piece about the oil economy, devised over three years by Bay Area artists Mutaytor. A 99-ft wooden oil derrick, BM's tallest ever installation, would ignite to shoot a 1,000-ft flame.
This torching was weather-delayed and much anticipated. But I nixed the crowds and multimedia show, and any countdown. Back from the playa, in the quiet of my camp, I looked toward the derrick and saw the sky suddenly explode in an enormous, flaming mushroom cloud. A graphic image in the landscape with a bigger impact than any choreographed performance. It was a complement to the eclipse and burn of the first day.
