The Atlantic

It was my first this year, and considering how thoroughly i loathe hot weather (spoiled growing up in the bay area), and hate not being able to shower and using public facilities, and certain types of individuals that go to this sort of thing, it was always going to be a difficult go. However, I did go and it was fairly transcendent as experiences go.

In particular, the playa at night is extraordinary and unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life. Limitless fun to ride your bike around and indulge in the fun all around.

But what sticks with me most of all, and is easily the most powerful aspect was the Temple. I didn’t know what to think of it before hand and had a bit of the wrong picture about it.

Experiencing it was simply near indescribable. It was a place that housed just an immense sense of grief, loss, love and community, with tokens, photographs, stories, and messages to the loved and lost and gone, that was just….flat out so much more affecting than any funeral service, eulogy, or anything of the sort I had ever attended. It was incredibly profound, and as if that wasn’t enough, the first time I entered a young man began to play an instrument in the dusty twilight that sounded like a cross between a peruvian pan flute, and something from near east asia. It was a mournful, loving, powerful, incredible melody, like something out of baraka. Listening to it as young men comforted another young man sobbing near the sculpture in the middle, and several others weeped around made for a sense of humanity that was unparalleled in my life.

Now if only it wasn’t for the narcissistic half-wit that then began to inexplicably dance in front of us, it might have been even more affecting. Regardless it was extraordinary to behold, and remains with me to this day. The morning of our last day, we broke down camp, except for our shade structure, and made one last trip to the playa, exploring what we could, and finishing with one last moment at the temple. As it turned out, making sure to go to the temple last for a few silent moments there was an incredibly prescient decision, as a few hours later when we finally had cell reception back we learned that a close friend had been killed, and while the temple certainly couldn’t change any aspect of that horrific reality, it did impart a lasting touch of peace that has stayed with us since we left.

Trey Ratcliff’s page