The kinship he builds with other clinicians who volunteer at Burning Man “is a real bonding experience,” he said. “It's a big time commitment, and it's hard work. It's unlike anyplace most people have been to in their entire lives.”
Among the spectacles he looks forward to seeing every year are the art installations by the Flaming Lotus Girls, a group of artisans who create fire-breathing sculptures as big as a house in scale (www.flaminglotus.com
“A couple of years ago they created a dragon with moveable metal parts that spewed out fire,” Dr. Nelson said. “All the scales coming back from the dragon lit up with fire, and they all wrapped around an egg, so it was like a mother guarding an egg that was also on fire,” he added.
The communal feel of Burning Man draws Dr. Nelson back year after year. “That was the thing that struck me the first year after I came back, was this amazing sense of community, where you could walk into someone's camp, and they'd invite you to sit down and have dinner or take a shower if they had an RV.”
Burning Man organizers call it “an annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression.”
Dr. Marc S. Nelson volunteers as a medical chief at the Burning Man event in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.
Source Photos courtesy Dr. Marc S. Nelson