For the last month I've been trying to find a way to talk about Burning Man 2001. There's something ineffably spiritual about the festival in general, and the final Burn in particular that - in ordinary years - I'm left scratching my head for weeks trying to figure out what happened. But just a week after I watched people fuck around with fire in deeply weird and beautiful ways, I watched 6,000 people die in fire's antithetical counterpoint. Fire. A beautiful tool for self-expression, and a horrifying tool of anihilation. And just as the 9/11 fires seemed to diminish the importance of just about all human endeavor, you'd almost forget that people have as many opportunities for love as for hate, and for creativity as destruction. As a species, we're pretty grotesque. But for one week a year, 25,000 people gather in the Black Rock Desert northeast of Reno to celebrate our potential. And this year, Meat Camp was there to cater to the appetites for the flesh, and bring meat to the meatless.

And we did it in some of the most surreal environmental conditions I've ever experienced. Because of extreme dryness and the heat, the crystal-clear air erupted with dust storm white-outs several times a day and night. Very strange days and nights.

Until this year, the festival usually built in energy until a final explosion on Saturday night, with the burning of The Man. And after that, it's sort of like a giant spring wound within the heart of the city is released, hurling the happy madness every which way. But this year, it wasn't the finale. A Mausoleum in remembrance of the dead, made of ornate jigsaw filigree arose for the week, and went down in flames on Sunday. Like the Man and other work, It was an artifice that reached its climax in its own immolation. But unlike the other burns, this was a very somber event. I can't give a more elegant description than my fellow Meatie Miles. Check out his essay.

So, if you take my phototour, you'll get a taste of what I experienced. Most of the shots are crappy, taken on a disposable. Some chic-crappy, and taken with a Holga. But even if I'd taken the beautiful photos found on the linked pages, they're fragments of moments that thrive in memory.