Thank you for adding the regionals to the conversation. They are mentioned, very briefly here, but you are right — they deserve an entire story or maybe an entire book. I have only been to a regional in Maui. I’ve also been to probably hundreds of Burning Man parties and spin off festivals like Lucidity, Lighting in a Bottle and Symbiosis. Although the “best of” Burning Man art makes its way to these festivals and some of them adhere to the 10 principles, none of them are Burning Man, and none will ever feel like Burning Man because of commercial activity or completely different geophysical locations. There’s something very very special about the Black Rock Desert.

We feel that immediately as soon as we make that turn off the highway and enter that dry lake bed. The energy shifts.

It’s like a giant drum with water beneath, a “dry” lakebed. A resonator.

We are somehow more connected, energetically there. Some of the more mystical experiences that everybody who has been to BRC will tell you they’ve experienced include a feeling of interconnectedness and ability to communicate with each other that we don’t feel anywhere else.

It must have something to do with that lake bed and the active volcano beneath.

Visually and aesthetically, the vast and infinite paper white playa is like a blank canvas.

Everything becomes art there.

Everything you bring there takes on a patina.

We experience “playa” synchronicity — an ability to communicate without words that enables us to sense and take care of each other’s needs without asking.