The Burning Man is rising, phoenixlike, to five stories tall in the northwestern Nevada desert.
Today a whole makeshift city will materialize on the barren playa at his feet as thousands of people congregate to celebrate - who knows what?That's part of the mystery and allure of Burning Man, the pagan/technoid annual ritual that marks its 12th year this weekend.
The whole thing started as one man's fiery lamentation over lost love. In 1986, Larry Harvey built a stick man on Baker Beach along the San Francisco coast.
The wooden figure stood 10 feet tall and didn't look anything like the man Harvey's girlfriend dumped him for - but it was close enough.
Harvey lit a match and watched as flames devoured the figure, turning his anguish to ash. And then, suddenly, people swarmed mothlike to watch the fire.
Harvey saw the reaction and decided it was good. He built and torched a wooden man the next year and the next and the one after that, and every year people came in droves to be part of the spectacle. He moved it to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada in 1990.
Organizers call it "an experiment in temporary community" and a post-modern social movement that is the Internet incarnate.
In January, Harvey spoke at the ninth annual Be-In about Burning Man and posted his remarks at the Web site (http://www.burningman.com). Harvey compares Burning Man to cyberspace, "a frontier in which individuals can exercise remarkable freedoms" and reinvent themselves however they choose.
"Burning Man, then, is a compelling, physical analog for cyberspace, and, unsurprisingly, we have attracted many people who regard the experience as the equivalent of cyber-based reality," he says.
Technology types come in droves from San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Seattle.
Unlike cyberspace, though, there's no hiding behind anonymous monikers and disembodied space, he adds. Burning Man is about joining, however fleetingly, in real time and space to "experience the certain primal unities in the physical world."
"Both Burning Man and the Internet make it possible to regather the tribe of mankind, to talk to millions of dispersed individuals in the great diaspora of our mass society," he says.
Fine. Mostly it sounds like a great, wild party. The way past participants describe it, Burning Man sounds like what you'd get if Halloween, Easter and the Fourth of July were rolled into one super-duper holiday.
So while most of America spends the Labor Day weekend in such tame pursuits as backyard weiner roasts and picnics in parks, some 12,000 to 20,000 celebrants will toast Burning Man yet again.
They'll bake in the sun by day, freeze at night and try to survive desert storm cells. They'll beat drums, dance and parade in brilliant costumes - or in nothing more than body paint and mud from the nearby hot springs. But, hey, it's not Mardi Gras: Each person pays $65 to $75 for a ticket to the Burning Man festivities.
Black Rock City, as the temporary burg is known, will host dozens of "theme camps," the physical equivalent of Internet chat groups where people of like minds gather. There will be the Lawn Games Camp; Sketch City, which boasts it will have the world's largest Etch-A-Sketch; Band Camp Camp for wind, acoustical string and perscussion musicians; and Country Club Camp for the ascot and bermudas bunch.
The Blue Light District will serve as downtown Black Rock, with a 12-foot high blue mushroom providing shade shelter for the community kitchen; other mushrooms will serve as markers throughout the city.
Black Rock also will feature a milelong boulevard lined with "vast outdoor art galleries."
Jim Mason will bring his "Temporal Decomposition," a huge ice sundial with clocks and watches frozen inside. The melting sculpture will be covered with 50 gallons of cherry snow cone syrup and offered for communal licking.
Hendrik Hachl, a German artist, is planning to construct a giant ammonite or nautilus-like fossil shell that is 70 feet in diameter and 10 feet tall. Artist Paul Windsor will contribute a 20-foot-tall rocket sculpture complete with launching pad and a genetic ampoule in which Burning Manites can store contributions of DNA. This year's theme is "fertility," after all.
Which is not to say Burning Man is all fun and games. Event organizers are stressing safety and survival, in part because of mishaps that resulted in one death last year. They also are being required to post a $1 million insurance policy by the Washoe County Commission.
Where exactly is Burning Man being staged? That's about as vague as what it all means. People in-the-know know where it is and don't have to ask directions, old timers say.
The Burning Man Web site has a topographical map that shows the location of the Black Rock Desert, the Haulapai Playa and Fly Hot Springs. The closest settlement is Gerlach, population 340, which is about 17 miles south of the boom town of Black Rock.
You're on your own from there. Find it if you can and watch him burn, man, burn.