EP 55 Shadow Shorts #7

Shadow Shorts #7 is out now! Recorded at BRC in 2025 participants were challenged to explain BM‘s impact in 5 minutes or less. Each Shadow Short is one person’s story, please enjoy this short story of how Burning Man has impacted and influenced people over time.

Meet Don who has participated in Burning Man  for twenty-two consecutive years. The conversation highlights how the event serves as a massive creative outlet, where Don helps manage a solar-powered village and operates a daily margarita bar. A central theme of his story is the personal transformation from introversion to extroversion, as Don explains how the festival’s communal environment taught him to be "fearless" and deeply appreciative of others' efforts. He explains how the principles of open-mindedness and social connection found in the desert are carried back into the "default world" to enrich everyday life.

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Transcript

Before we start, I would like to ask your help to do two things. First, tell a friend or two who you think might like the show. And second, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The more reviews the show gets, the more likely it will even appear in search results. Thank you, and now on to the show. 

They make the trek out to Burning Man for a week and a day. After a lot of work, oh, there's a lot of play. Party party drama, drama, drama. b****, b****, b****. Year after year, they come back to scratch that itch. They all say their lives have been changed. After many years, lives have been rearranged. That changes what this show is all about. You'll see the impact. a burning man up and out. So sit back, relax, and cancel all your plans. These are the stories about the shadow of the man. 

Hello and welcome to the Shadow of the Man Show. I am your host, That Andy. This is a Shadow Shorts episode recorded at Bernie Man 2025. You can tell because of the background sounds. Okay, I have to apologize in advance for the variable sound quality. The microphones are quite sensitive and it picked up some noise from handling and occasionally the speakers allowed the microphone to drift away while speaking. Uh the sound might be more variable than the studio recordings, but the stories are fantastic. Please enjoy.

Yeah. Hi, I'm I'm Don.

Don. And you are?

I'm Andy. Andy.y.y.y.y.y.y.y.y.y. Hi Andy.

It's not about me, right?

No, I know. I know. Okay. So, so where from? I'm from uh Roondo Beach, Los Angeles area. Okay. And I've been burning for a long time. But if you when you look at the bell curve, I'm on the far end of the right hand side of the bell curve. Okay.

This is my uh 22nd year out here.

22nd like consecutive.

Consecutively.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, what early 2000

03 was my first burn.

Okay.

And I knew about Bernie man since 1993.

Okay. Oh. And I wanted to come, but I didn't want to come to do it by myself. I wanted to I needed someone to do this cuz I just know cuz I've done all kinds of campaign and all all stuff like that.

Well, how did you get into We said you knew about it, but uh like how what finally got you up here?

Well, I needed 93 took you 10 years to kind of hook in.

I needed to find the right person to come here to do with it cuz I knew harsh conditions and stuff like that. It would be a horrible trip, but I brought the wrong person.

So, it took me 10 years till I found my buddy. And uh then He heard about it on the radio. He called me up instantly because I'm an adventurer and I do all kinds of stuff. He said, "Hey, I bought this thing called Burning Man." I said, "Dude, I know all about it. Let's go."

So, you got hooked and you've been going 22nd, two 22 years, right? So, so what what what keeps you coming back?

Well, it's um it's building everything and having fun. And during the year, like, okay, what am I going to do? Uh so, it's a it's like a hobby, if you will.

And I get to create all this really cool stuff. Like, I run a margarita bar in the afternoon. afternoon. Okay.

And so I get a ton of people. Bernie man comes to me for a couple hours of the day. Okay. So plus I'm I'm in the alternative energy zone village

and we're like this year like we're 320 people in like 45 little camps

and no one runs generators. It's all uh solar panels.

Yeah.

And so we've built this really cool community of years and years of like really cool people as is everywhere you know the the

So we have uh our place we I'm on I come in, I have early arrival.

Mhm.

And we come in on Monday and we lay out a whole village. We got six acres.

So of land the board gives us

Yeah. And we have to mark out all the roads and the streets and everybody's got their camping spot and all that. So for like two, three days, first couple of days, we're scratching lines in the desert measuring and all that stuff like that. But it's but I like a challenge

and it's just fun to do this stuff. It's like fort building for adults, right? And it's all together, you know? It's like I like to ride my bike. Guess what? You ride your bike out here with well not this year but your hands off and eyes closed. It's all a good time.

What about uh when you go back the rest of your life in default worlds like what do you bring with you or has it like affected your life back there in any way?

Well, it has in the respect that I used to be um introverted.

Uhhuh.

Okay. And I I had worked on it to not be introverted because I knew if I was introverted my life would not be as fulfilling and rich as I wanted it to be.

But coming here really flipped me over because it's like when you walk you walk into the camps and if you're an introvert it's a little bit difficult and it's like but now I'm fearless. I walk in I see a cam and it's like hey this looks cool or whatever and then

but what about like in the rest of the world it's like like at a crosswalk you see someone just look at your phone like hey how's it going

that exactly so that's what I do I'll say freaks people out and I make

it does it really does so I make it a point to just have be really open-minded

um in the real world more than so than before. And I'm really cognizant of the details and things that people do cuz I come out here and I see all this awesome stuff that people build down to the little tiniest details. And then I can appreciate how much effort it took for them to create whatever it is they're bringing here. And of course, we spend a lot of effort creating what we bring here. So it gives me a really nice appreciation. So when I go see something or I'll see somebody wearing something really cool, that's an awesome thing just cuz I they they put it out there for me to look at and I want to you know appreciate that.

So you go up and talk to them and

I do I do and a lot of time when people get freaked out a lot of times

I think when you ask somebody about like it's their project or their passion I mean I think even the rest of the world I mean it might be a little creepy that someone's talking to me but but when you be like I really like what you did explain it to me and then they're like oh you know yeah I would love to

right yeah so that's what has Bernie man has meant to me it's it's enriched my life because I'm much more open to people much more open to um ideas, although I've always been open to ideas cuz I've been I've traveled all over the world. So, um I spent like almost three years traveling all around the world and out of my backpack.

So, I've been all through I went the whole length of African continent and went through Southeast Asia. Wow. Europe, all that stuff. So,

like you're forever 20 years old.

I was 21 when I took off.

Yeah.

So,

all right. Well, thank you very much.

Hey, thank you very much. It was fun. Hey, and burn bright. Right. Right.

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Thank you for listening to this latest one in the can. Very soon you'll be listening to a new Shadow of the Man.