Local woman has memorable experiences at mud-caked Burning Man festival
Courtesy of Dorothy Tecklenburg
J.C. Tecklenburg joins his mother, Dorothy Tecklenburg, at this year’s Burning Man festival in Nevada.
Courtesy of Dorothy Tecklenburg
Dorothy Tecklenburg is shown at the Burning Man festival in Nevada, which became muddy this year down to drenching downpours.
One of the many memories Dorothy Tecklenburg brought back from this year’s Burning Man festival is the sight of someone making their way through muck so tough to walk through that at one point they raised their leg but their shoe remained stuck in the mire.
To attend Burning Man, Tecklenburg explained, “You have to be really, really prepared and pretty fearless. It’s a very physically challenging event.”
And, as the world knows by now, the level of fearlessness and physical challenge associated with Burning Man was ratcheted up several notches this year. Held every year in a remote part of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, Burning Man is premised on the idea of, as Tecklenburg puts it, “radical self-reliance,” with those attending bringing their own food and supplies to the weeklong extravaganza.
This year, however, the countercultural festival that celebrates art and self-expression along with self-reliance became much more perilous. Drenching rains generated by the remnants of Hurricane Hilary turned the desert’s alkaline dust into sludge so forbidding that festivalgoers were stranded with little means of escape beyond their own two feet. Fortunately, the desert dried out sufficiently that the estimated 100,000 people who attended were able to make their way out in a massive exodus.
Now home in Amity and nursing a broken hip after she fell off a bike at the festival, Tecklenburg said she would gladly attend another Burning Man festival if she has the chance.
“As Mike Tomlin says, I don’t live in my fears,” she said. An offer was made to airlift her out of Burning Man after her injury, but Tecklenburg opted to stay put and use a walker that was provided to her.
This year’s festival was the fourth Tecklenburg attended. A tai chi teacher, she went with a group of people hailing from Singapore, Chicago, Minnesota and other locations. She was also accompanied by her son, J.C. Tecklenburg, a 2011 graduate of Trinity High School who is now an animator and graphic designer in Chicago. He described how Burning Man is a “decommodified zone,” where those attending offer “gifts” to other festivalgoers. He and his mother gave away whiskey and educated those attending on the Whiskey Rebellion that unfolded in Washington County 230 years ago. She also taught tai chi.
The whiskey “was really for people who were there from the West Coast and they know nothing of our history,” Tecklenburg said.
For anyone who has not attended a Burning Man festival since its inception in 1991, Tecklenburg recommends venturing to one of the regional Burning Man-style festivals, one of which is coming up in October in Bedford.
“You can’t really understand what you need to do unless you meet some other Burners and attach yourself to that community,” she said.