The Desert, the Mud and the Man

I grew up in a ghetto.

I served 20 years in the army.

I've lived through things that don't leave you.

The VA calls it severe PTSD.

I call it memory.

Now I live in rural Appalachia, Watauga County, North Carolina.

And I have goats and chickens and ducks and dogs.

And a creek that talks more than people do.

Where isolation is normal.

And silence is normal.

So when people talk about Burning Man like it's a spiritual awakening, I didn't know what to do with that.

My life already had deserts, already had fire, darkness.

I already had moments where everything fell stripped down to the bone.

I remember making a comment online, just a passing thing about my adventure goals that I had put in my bucket list.

And one of those goals was attending Burning Man.

Of course, I didn't really know anything about the process.

You know, I knew it was difficult.

I knew it was something really out of the box.

And someone replied, are you really going? Now that question felt like a dare, I mean, not a challenge, but an invitation to step outside the life I'd built and to do that crazy thing because it would be difficult and new and not just talk about it.

I didn't know for sure what I was looking for, but I knew I needed to see something different, something that wasn't the mountains, something that wasn't the past.