What I learned on a bicycle adventure at Burning Man 2022

BLACK ROCK CITY, Nev. –– I’m pedaling my red and cream beach cruiser through thick playa dust trailing my red and rainbow wheels like rocket smoke.

I’m at Burning Man, and I feel like a kid again. The reason for this transmission is to tell you why.

Black Rock City, a sprawling sandbox of stimuli on a planet called playa, is a place entirely new to me, but the inhabitants here say the only way to explore it is by bicycle.

The bicycle, they told me, is the main mode of transportation at Burning Man, this planet’s yearly gathering of 80,000 burners from far-flung corners of Earth, a land much different than this one.

Here, the people live in large camps named for the natures, intentions and imaginations of the inhabitants there. There’s Run Free, where the burners are clean and sober and find ways to explore Black Rock City without substances that turn the world into a lysergic, candy-colored dreamscape. There’s Dustfish, where desert angels sing of acid and hot springs. And among hundreds of others, there’s Journeylizm, a camp of artists, scientists and journalists here to document another burn. They have adopted me. While I am here, this is my home.