Holy Man?

Every year thousands of people make pilgrimages to sacred places for reasons of their own. Typically one reads about these pilgrimages in a holy context, but are all pilgrimages holy in nature? I too set aside a week each year in search of intellectual, spiritual, and social enlightenment. The destination remains the same Black Rock City Nevada. Every year me and about 50,000 other individuals gather in the vast emptiness of the northern Nevada desert for an event called Burning Man.

I compare this to a religious pilgrimage because there are some inarguable similarities. People pack up what’s important to them and venture off for a week of unknowable spiritual fulfillment. Each has its sacred location and each has its totem. So I ask how different is Burning man from other holy pilgrimages? At this point I broke to look up “holy pilgrimage” in Google since I have no idea what I’m talking about. The first hit was a burning man hit. I rest my case. I should mention that in my Google search I did misspell “pilgrimage”, but oh well.

I’ve read so many write ups about burning man and none of them accurately describe the event. Why; because the essence of burning man can not be captured in words. Defining burning man is like trying to define love. Though collections of adjectives can give the reader an idea of said concept, the reader cannot possibly comprehend its true meaning until he/she actually “feels” it for themselves.