One year, when I worked at Expeditors, I dressed up as Cousin It for Halloween. My costume was incredibly simple — all I had to do was wear a trenchcoat, brush my hair over my face, and put some sunglasses over the hair.

I suspect the reason I won the costume contest was actually not how I looked, but how I acted. Whenever I wasn’t at my desk (and I don’t think Expeditors got their money out of me that day), I would stand up, hold my arms at my sides, and scuffle-scoot across the carpet, making high-pitched bursts of squeaking noises. In a men-must-wear-ties business environment, it drew a lot of laughs.

That Halloween evening, I came home from work, triumphant with success. I wanted to take my winning costume out again, so I talked Barry into going to Trolloween that night. “But what am I going to wear?” he asked.

I started thinking, and I got out the life-sized crow my Dad had given us in honor of our boat, the Northern Crow. “How about putting this on your shoulder?” It was styrofoam-light, with realistic glossy black feathers. I dug out a huge green jacket with a hood to go with it.

“You look great!” I enthused, after he was dressed. His face was hidden deep in the hood, and the crow looked real, wired onto his shoulder. He’d added black longjohns, a pair of leather hiking boots, and a big wooden hiking staff. But peering into the mirror, he frowned.

“What do I tell people I am?”

“You’re not a kid any more. It’s only little kids who get asked, ‘What are you?’ on Halloween!”

That night, my award-winning Cousin It costume was a complete failure. Without the bright fluorescent lights of the office, I couldn’t see a thing. And my scoot-and-squeak performance didn’t translate to the large crowd, nor was it fast enough to keep up with the parade.

But Barry was a huge success. Everyone who saw the crow did a double-take and asked if it was real. Over and over, I heard (although I couldn’t see a damn thing) people saying to Barry, “Great costume, man!”

At the end of the evening, he was as triumphant as I’d been earlier.

Since then, we’re not afraid to dress up in non-representational costumes (although Barry did dress as Jolly Roger Rabbit at Burning Man in 2007). Our costume bins are full of things that are colorful and wildly patterned, and it’s just a matter of putting the right colors and textures together with the right wigs, hats, and shoes.

The next time you dress up, if anyone asks what you are, here’s what you do. Put your arms at your sides, shuffle-scoot quickly across the ground, and make high-pitched bursts of squeaking noises. I guarantee, they won’t ask twice.

A little costume inspiration

Following are a few of my favorite Burning Man costume photos. Please be forewarned, some of the images are very revealing, and although there is no outright nudity, you might see more of Meps (and some other people) than you really want to.

Well, that last piece of mine was a total flop. Across the internet, I could hear my readers rolling their eyes. They wanted a lively Burning Man report with crazy costumes, naked people, and dancing boys. Instead, I got all serious.Sorry ’bout that.

I will now proceed to Day Two, when the sun came out with all the crazy costumes, naked people, and dancing boys.

The dancing boys were on top of a large Penske rental truck parked across from the Squid Wagon. One of them wore only a pair of fur hot pants with a long, furry tail. He was my favorite, and I worried that he might trip over his tail and fall off the truck.

The sun was bearing down on us, so we set to work on our flaccid shade structure. First, we unloaded the roof of the van — two bicycles, a room-sized piece of Berber carpet, and one disassembled porta-potty.

That porta-potty was the reason we were camping with the Lamplighters.

Sometime in July, our cell phone rang in the Morehead City Salvation Army, where we were shopping (unsuccessfully; it’s a boring thrift store) for costumes. A Burner named Cosmo had seen my number posted on a Burning Man ride board. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in carrying a large parcel in our van, in exchange for some gas money. “It’s a shower for the Lamplighters,” he told me.

Cosmo asked me “Where are you camping?” I admitted that we hadn’t figured that out yet. “You should camp with Lamplighters,” he said. “It’s a fantastic group of people — they’re just like family to me. Sometimes, I don’t even leave the camp the whole time.”

Barry thought joining the Lamplighters sounded like a great idea, a completely different experience from last year. Instead of a small group of Seattlites near the outer edge of the city, we’d be with a large international group right in the center of the city, with a communal kitchen and lounge. But was this fellow Cosmo some kind of nut? How could he go to Burning Man without leaving his camp?

We never actually met the man before we set out on our cross-country journey. We made the arrangements by phone, and one weekend, he dropped off a large, lumpy pile of plastic parts at my brother’s house in Durham. A few days later, we stopped through, strapped it to the top of the van, and carried it across the USA to Cosmo and the Lamplighters.

Our camping spot, assigned to us by a fellow called Snotto, was on an alley that ran through the camp. To one side were a forest of tents and the elaborate Lamplighter kitchen. On the other side were the dancing boys and the Lamplighter bar and lounge. Behind us were Cosmo’s Ryder truck and a large cardboard box that we assumed was for storage. And in front, about 20 feet away, was a small row of porta-potties.

As soon as we emerged from the van, it was apparent that our campsite wasn’t on a high-traffic pedestrian walkway — it WAS the high-traffic walkway. The problem was, we needed our shade structure to keep the interior of the van from turning into an oven, and there was no way to reef the sail.

As we set up the giant canopy, I fretted about all those strangers walking through “our” space. Could we hang sheets or set up chairs to keep them from walking under our shade structure, or across our carpet?

Around then, a woman walked by on her way to the porta-potties. She was wearing a beautifully colorful costume, and I complimented her on it. A fellow passed on his way to the kitchen, wearing a 70’s-patterned muumuu, and we got into a conversation about how he found it on the internet. Then a neighbor came from another direction. He wasn’t sure which way to go — there didn’t seem to be a route for him that didn’t go through our space.

“Please, feel free to come through this way — you’re not bothering us at all,” I said. “We can’t figure out any way to make this shade structure smaller, so just come on through and enjoy it.”

That was how we met one of the most interesting Lamplighters, No Account, known around camp as Noah. The lady in the beautiful costume was Day-Zee. The dancing boy was Christopher, but I never learned the name of the man with the amazing muumuu.

I started to relax. What if we didn’t “claim” the space, but actually welcomed people walking through? What would happen?

What happened was that we met dozens and dozens of fun people on their way to the kitchen, the bar, or the bathroom. We were inescapable — since we attached part of the shade structure to our neighbor Mike’s RV, even people who didn’t stop to say hello had to pass under our guy rope, decorated with the same colorful yacht pennants used at our wedding in 1991.

Once the structure was up, we turned our attention to our costumes, packed in three large plastic totes. Mike unloaded his bicycle, grabbed his camera, and set off to see the art.

About 45 minutes later, when Mike returned, we were still there, digging through the costume boxes. He was puzzled. “Haven’t you left yet?” he asked.

What had happened was this: As we sorted through the costumes, people came walking through our camp. We said hello and got into conversations with them. So the 45 minutes included about 5 minutes of costume-sorting and 40 minutes of making new friends.

We’d been admiring Swagmeister’s tatoos, teasing Boxes With Bears about his upcoming wedding, and gossiping with Sean about the dancing boys across the way. Then Leanne and Jeremy came by, and we introduced them to Mike. But he had more to see, so he went off again.

When he returned, we were still there. “Haven’t you guys left yet?” he asked, incredulous. “We’re almost ready!” we said. Barry was just tying the turtle sarong that went with his mind-blowing bowling shirt. I had zipped up my pink knee-high boots and was tying on the pink-and-green hat.

“Have you met Mr. Mister?” we asked. “He’s the guy camping in those cardboard boxes over there.”

This particular hour had been spent visiting with Mr. Mister, who gave me a tour of his home. He’d used aircraft part boxes to construct a shelter that was neatly organized and nearly dustproof. In previous years, he’d learned to make it fairly tall, because people didn’t realize it was a house. He’d once been in bed when an amorous couple sat on top of him and started making out.

With all the visitors, it took us forever to blow up the four inflatable space aliens, A. Leeanne, Ros Well, Lou Wheeze, and Gert Rude, and put on their jeweled neck collars so their heads wouldn’t droop. Then I strapped them onto my bike and assembled their spacecraft. Barry put together his flying apparition and hung it from his bike.

Finally, late in the afternoon, we took off. To Mike, it must have seemed that we dawdled around camp all day. But we’d actually gotten a lot done, from engineering an unusual and sturdy shade structure to assembling ourselves and our bicycles as art. For we were not just there to see Burning Man, we were there to be seen by Burning Man.

Along the way, we made a lot of new friends. I wish I had pictures of more of them. Heck, I wish I knew more of their names. They were strangers when they came to our crossroads, but they weren’t strangers when they left. And that’s the most time-consuming — and entertaining — thing we did for days.

All across the country, all our supporters want to know: How was Burning Man? The short answer is, IT WAS GREAT! The long answer is very long, so I’ll break it up into several pieces. The first one follows.
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My first day at Burning Man was a blur. Literally.

The whiteout started at the worst possible time. We had partially unrolled the unwieldy 30-foot sail over the top of the Squid Wagon, and we had to abandon it and dive inside.

For a long time, we sat watching fine playa dust sift through tiny cracks in the doors and windows. Then we started trying to unearth the dust masks and goggles we’d brought to protect our lungs and eyes. Meanwhile, the sail flapped and chafed against the van, and we couldn’t see five feet. Finally, wearing our protective gear, we groped our way to the Lamplighters’ lounge, almost missing it in the total whiteout.

Was this what we’d driven across the country for?

The storm hadn’t abated by 5 pm, when we coughed and hacked our way to the Lamplighter Chapel. We milled around with the other newbies, until someone directed us to Digital Dan at the signup board. Dan is a tall, handsome man, and he looked like a sexy, elegant monk in his flame-decorated Lamplighter robe. He was also mysteriously silent. At the time, I thought that was to keep the process solemn and avoid back-talk. It seemed so appropriate that it was days later I finally realized he has a health issue that prevents him from talking.

Barry and I had seen pictures of the Lamplighting processions, but we were new to the complex, labor-intensive process. Each night, this volunteer public utility lights over a thousand kerosene lanterns and carries them, in robed processions, to 20-foot lampposts along the city’s major streets.

Each route requires dozens of people who sign up for one of four roles: A luminary, who leads each group; carriers, who carry 12 lanterns on long sturdy poles across their shoulders; lifters, who use long, slender poles to hang the lanterns on the lampposts; and support, the people who keep lanterns lit and take care of carriers’ and lifters’ needs.

That first night, Barry signed up as a lifter on the lengthy 2 o’clock route. I was nervous — was I strong enough to carry 30 pounds of lanterns and pole? Was I agile enough to hang lanterns 20 feet in the air? I decided to sign up as support, since that sounded easier.

There were about a hundred people milling about in the dust, cleaning lamps, trimming wicks, and using turkey basters to fill the reservoirs with kerosene. The tricky part was lighting the lamps in the storm, and I fretted about my ability to keep the lamps lit.

Finally, the robetenders helped us put on our robes and tied the cowls behind our heads. Then we gathered into groups, according to our routes. Our luminary, an old hand by the name of Jeff-Who, introduced to the lead carrier, a wild and crazy young woman named Ducky. She immediately began group bonding activities, including calling us the “Deuces” and inventing our own gang sign. Looking at Ducky and another carrier, a slender, silver-haired woman, I thought maybe carrying lanterns wouldn’t be so tough — they looked pretty normal, not like body builders.

So when Jeff-Who reviewed our roles and mentioned that support people would be expected to take over if a carrier or lifter was unable to finish the route, I wasn’t too worried.

Maybe I should have been.

We began lifting the loaded poles onto the carriers’ shoulders. I saw the silver-haired woman falter, then begin to walk slowly toward the front of the chapel. She seemed to be having trouble.

She didn’t quite make it to the fire cauldron, where all the routes gather for a convocation before spreading out. I found myself stepping in, putting a rolled towel around my neck and taking the heavy load on my shoulders. It wasn’t a question of whether or not I could do it. She could not, so I had to.

The load was so heavy and the wind so strong that all I could do was slowly place one foot in front of the other, following the person in front of me. I couldn’t turn my head, so I couldn’t see except straight in front of me. I was too focused on the pain in my neck and shoulders and arms to see anything, anyway. To make matters worse, the lanterns developed a maddening swing that got worse with every step.

Damn. This was the hardest thing I’d ever done, and I hadn’t even signed up for it.

Worse yet, I was near the end of the line, and the lifters weren’t taking my lamps and lightening my load. I was right at the edge of my physical limit, and I festered as I carried my load, angry at being ignored. But I was too exhausted by the task at hand to even complain.

I later realized we’d been sent out with extra lanterns. Since mine were swinging so much, they’d mostly blown out. In the fierce wind and whiteout, the lifters had all they could do to hang lanterns that were actually lit.

When it was all over, I stood in the middle of the road with my head down, like a horse that’s about to collapse in exhaustion. Someone took my lanterns and my pole, but I could barely get my arms down. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to use them for the rest of the week. I practically had to be lifted onto the truck for the ride back, where I heard Jeff-Who telling us this was the worst weather he’d ever seen for Lamplighting.

But our ordeal was not over.

The truck made a detour on the way home, out to the Man. That route had run out of lanterns, and they needed us to light and hang some of our extras.

It had only been about ten minutes, but somehow I found use of my arms again. I picked up a lifting pole and managed to hang a lantern. And another one. I drifted away from Barry, towards an empty lamppost, and then onto another one. Finally, I ran out of lanterns. As I turned back towards the truck, I panicked. It had totally vanished in the whiteout.

First came fear, then adrenaline, and then, when I found the truck, relief. And more relief when Barry appeared out of the whiteout.

We arrived back at Lamplighter Village exhausted. The kitchen crew had held dinner for us, but we could barely lift our forks.

This was Day One of a typical Burning Man experience. We’ve often heard it said that the event will push your boundaries, whatever they are. Even — especially — if you don’t know what they are. Evidently, I had some boundaries regarding strength and stamina that needed pushing. Day One of Burning Man 2008 was great!