Basura Sagrada Burns 3 - a photo on Flickriver

            Sunday night's temple burn took a while to get going.  I assume that they postponed the burn because of the high winds.  Eventually the winds calmed down and Basura Sagrada, as the temple was named, went up in flames.  

What I like the most about the temple burns is the silence.  You can't see it here, but there is a crowd of tens of thousands (I say at least 30,000) of people watching this fire in near total silence.  I mean it - nothing more than a whisper.  From this distance you can hear every detail of this building burning.  My only noise complaint this year was that while no one in the crowd made a peep, some shitty PARTY CITY WOOO partEEE bus thought it best to have their stupid generator running the whole time.  That means that besides the fire, it was the only sound.  That bus should have been hijacked and driven into the fire - it sure would have helped the structure come down!

We visited the temple around sunset just a few hours before the burn.  People appeared to be inside the building weakening the structure with chainsaws.  The massive wooden columns visible in this photo resisted their efforts and the temple took a very long time to come down.  

The thick columns were necessary because the temple was a two-story affair this year.  You could walk up a beautiful double-helix spiral staircase to an amazing upper level with magnificent views.  All around you was the tinkling sound of hundreds of hanging pieces of metal dancing in the wind.  They were flattened cans and metal garbage that had been fashioned into wonderful wind chimes.

A little after the building finally burned down, the winds really picked up again.  Roberto and I started to make the walk back to camp along with several thousands of other people barely visible in the dust and wind.  Faint suggestions of revelers punctuated by LED lights and glow sticks all walked with us in the same direction.  It was very surreal.

Roberto told me, "This right now is why I have such a hard time explaining Burning Man to people back home."

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Taken on: August 31, 2008

Tags:

2008

nevada

man

burningman

black

rock

city

blackrockcity

brc

american

dream

art

party

basura

sagrada

temple

fire

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Sets appears in: • Burning Man 2008

Groups appears in: • Pictures With Stories - 5 sentence MINIMUM • Burning Man! more » • %Burning Man at Night% • Story Behind the Picture: Non Fiction « less

Camera: Canon PowerShot SD800 IS, f/5.0, 1/100 sec, 12.7mm (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon PowerShot SD800 IS
Lens:	4.6-17.3 mm
Aperture:	f/5.0
Exposure Time:	0.01 sec (1/100)
Focal Length:	12.7mm
Exposure Bias:	-5/3 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
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