BLACK ROCK CITY, Nevada - Sunday morning in the Black Rock Desert, hundreds of weary burners sifted through the charred and fragrant remains of the man, hunting for ritual objects.
They stuffed chunks of metal and wire into their dusty backpacks. Some used their hands as cups, pouring charcoal and ash into plastic bags.
It's clear why spiritual movements begin in deserts. The landscape and climate nurture them.
The extreme weather and stark natural beauty, the constant threat of sunstroke, dehydration and hallucination make Black Rock City an ideal location for the birth of a new and improvisational American religion in which guilt is burned away and false idols are enthusiastically endorsed.
During the lighting of the man late Saturday night, 35,000 Black Rock residents who had paid a minimum $350 US at the gate to attend -- less for advance tickets bought online -- gathered in the centre of the massive circular city. Hundreds of fire spinners performed to a droning drumbeat inside the safety perimeter. Strangers wished each other, "Happy burn."
Spinners dispersed and the observatory sphere under the man -- his blue neon arms raised in victory -- sparked up. Fireworks shot into the Nevada sky, flashing off the mountains, as the flames under the man began to grow. His neon lights blinked out and his legs caught fire. The crowd roared in unison, on the ground and in their mad, flashing art cars.
"Burn!" they screamed. "Burn him! Burn that (expletive) thing!"
Ten minutes after he caught fire, the wooden man began to twist, slouch and lose confidence. He teetered and fell into the circle of flames below and the people hopped and cheered. They crossed the safety line and ran toward the man, dancing in a circle around him.
In Centre Camp, on a section of wall, someone spray-painted, "Give BM back to the pagans." There was a joyously menacing pre-Christian hum in the air Saturday night, as burners howled and streaked around their man, but "pagan" doesn't capture the spirit of Black Rock City's religious life.
To find it, you have to walk a bit farther, to the north end of the playa, where David Best's majestic birchwood temple stands. At the east entrance of the massive structure, the beginning of a long boardwalk leading to a bridge and a series of altars, a burner has scrawled, "God is here, spread the word."
This is the first of thousands of messages, written to lost fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, grandparents and friends. For the past several years, Best's contribution to Burning Man has been a monument to the dead that goes up in flames Sunday night, a more sombre and reflective event than Saturday's mass catharsis.
At any one time this week, hundreds of people passed each other in silence or near silence as they walked through the temple, many of them weeping. The messages of love written on the wood and the photographs pasted to the altars are heartbreaking.
Best is nearly always at the temple and burners know him. They follow him around, hug him and kiss him.
They cry and tell him stories about children or parents they've lost, and what his temple means to them. Mostly they just thank him.
"In this environment, people lose their barriers," Best said during a break in the last phase of construction. As always, a large crowd of burners gathered to hear him speak. He wore jeans and a white cowboy shirt, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
"Every new dust storm breaks you down just a little bit more. A man came up to me after last year's temple burn and he said, 'How can it be that I can't cry in church yet I can cry here?' Well, you're battered. You're battered by this place, and that opens you up."
The largest work on the playa is called The Temple of Stars, fitting with this year's theme, Vault of Heaven. But Best thinks of it as the Temple of Forgiveness.
"When I light the temple I walk around the perimeter to tell people it's not their fault," he said.
"I feel really embarrassed to have to do it, and most people don't know why I'm going around telling them it's not their fault. But I do it because I know there's a handful of people out there who blame themselves."
More burners gathered around Best, so our conversation began to resemble an improvised press conference more than a personal interview.
"I'm not an architect," he said. "Architects make buildings that are perfect and it makes people imperfect. I make buildings that are imperfect, and they make people perfect. It gives them permission."
Burning Man attracts thousands of people attached to elements of the New Age movement.
A few of the burners who hung around the temple on Sunday afternoon, in plus-40 C heat and no shade, meditated or practised yoga or prayed naked to the blue sky.
But this is predominantly a pilgrimage for people who never connected with an institutional religion or anything you can find in a metaphysical boutique.
The corners and circles and fountains and pinwheels of wood, the chandeliers and lanterns that make up the Temple of Forgiveness are inspired by places of worship around the globe, yet the power of the temple and the power of Burning Man draws very little from dogma.
On the contrary, Burning Man derives its spiritual power from institutional freedom, honesty, creativity and civic participation. On Sunday afternoon, despite the crushing heat, it was a struggle to leave the exquisite temple and find shade. The bad food and the lack of sleep, the apocalyptically filthy hair and the horrors of the portable toilets, the ubiquitous hippie dancers and the memories of chubby naked men performing downward facing dog (a yoga position) were fully justified.
Burning Man creator Larry Harvey wouldn't be insulted if Best's temple overtook the man as the spiritual core of this event. He is eager to see Burning Man change and grow -- for its philosophical basis to fall from his hands and spread to the society beyond its boundaries.
"We're part of a larger force of social change," he said on his perch at First Camp overlooking the playa.
"We're not against commerce. What we are against is a world where market forces commodify every value, commodify every experience. Once there were areas of our lives that were felt to be sacred. What is there now?"
Under the shade structure in Alberta Camp, a few of the Canadians began hammering out their rebar tent pegs. Others tried to sleep through their hangovers, pestered by the temperature. Everyone declared they were eager to see their pilgrimage come to an end, to return to the sushi and families and showers of the outside world. For the opportunity to bring Burning Man home with them.
"It makes you question the nature of your spirituality, no matter what happens out here, just because your body and your mind goes through all this," said Black Rock ranger and Edmonton Burning Man co-ordinator Kerry McLean.
Her friends slept and slouched in sarongs and bikinis around her, sipping water in the thick, dry, unCanadian heat.
"It plants seeds in people," McLean said. "It did in me. We have to continue the spirit of Burning Man, in whole or in part, in the default world. We have to say hi to strangers."