To those of you brothers and sister burners, the terms PLAYA, BLACK ROCK CITY, THE MAN, HAPPY BURN, LEAVE NO TRACE, CENTER CAMP, THE TEMPLE, and even GERLACH are all heart warming words that anchor you straight back to this unbelievable feeling of freedom that seems to just be available when you go back to the desert, the white playa powdery desert that is home to about 50,000 of us attending a once a year very hot week at Burning Man, the largest cultural consciousness gathering in the world.

Burning Man 2010 marked my 10 year anniversary as a burner (a fact that still surprises those that only know me through my professional work), and this is my decade in review.

I am often asked to explain the experience of Burning Man, especially to those that have been saying for years that "next year, we're going…" and ending up staying home, observing their friends take off yet AGAIN to this Black Rock City that is really a one week "made up", temporary place of dusty, EXPENSIVE accommodations, where you pay to have the right to stay but bring ALL you need to survive, and on top of it all the date is always the most complicated date of the year!!! I mean, it's the last week of summer, kids are going back to schools, and parents sink back into finally getting things done. So why am I going through this every year? Is it because of the beautiful artistic expressions in sculptures, paint, and unbelievable performance talent of fire dancers I get to admire? Or is it because of the feeling of freedom to BE all that you can truly be? Or perhaps because I take a week off electronics, and obligations, and definitions and am committed to one very important thing…ME? Being happy? Available to create, connect, and communicate unity, peace, love, and creating a world where all matters?

Yes, I find many great reasons to leave my daily life, my home, my kids, my work, my very comfortable western living and head on to a week in the desert every summer in the last 10 years. And when I'm there, a citizen of the city that rises on top of a white desert, nested between the black rocks, I find hope. Hope that the world is shifting, that humanity is seeking ultimate joy, constant care and connection to all. Hope that there are many that are living life from a conscious place of being. Hope that I am not alone. Hope that if 50,000 people can live in ecological care, peace, and share the outmost effortless abundance one can ever experience, then 7 billions of the most complex organisms can do too.

And throughout the week, right in the middle of the city, stands in the vast emptiness of the Playa, strong, tall and resilient to the severe sand storms THE MAN. The main event, the reason we have all gathered. And his story is the story that attracts people from all walks of life, from all over the world, of all ages, colors, genders, styles of living, beliefs, and languages to invest their resources and experience the BURN of the MAN.

For a year long of coming together, planning, building, creating, networking we are focused on the reason that bridges our differences and reminds us that we can always BURN the MAN. Burn the old that doesn't serve us anymore. The beliefs that limit us, the values that no longer are applicable to a world united - the negative emotions and experiences we have stored consciously in the unconscious. And the MAN reminds us all…Re-member, remember of your inherited mechanism to evolve, transform and choose to be the MAN you want to be at any given moment. And how often we tend to forget, thinking that we are the product of luck and circumstances, that life is happening to us, and that surviving is our natural set default.

And so on Saturday night, on my 10 year BURNING MAN anniversary as I was held by my husband, surrounded by my friends, embraced by a community of beings that strangely enough are very different than I but yet, other pieces of my true self and being, an ancient memory broke through, the memory of evolution, of transformation, of co-creation; the memory that motivates 50,000 people to gather and choose to burn the old and start anew; the memory that evokes the simple understanding that we are here to grow, to live life to the fullest, to love all, to be in care and gratitude and the memory of the divine spirit that is within us, above us, and all around us.