I have very few photos from the trip I took to Renegade Man in 2022, but one video from the drive out there never fails to make me laugh:
What is Renegade Man exactly?
Renegade Man is essentially the low-rent version of Burning Man. It originally took place in 2021 as a reaction to the official Burning Man being cancelled, and then continued as a parallel event in 2022. It was in the same location (Black Rock Desert) but did not have any admission costs and was truly an off-grid experience.
Going to Burning Man is something that people do at their own risk, and Renegade Man is a more extreme version of that. It truly emphasizes the value of “radical self-reliance.”
The worst part of this is that my travel buddy and I weren’t truly prepared. We had packed a single air mattress thinking it was a double or queen size one we could share. We thought that the reflective tent my friend let me borrow would basically be self-cooling; it turns out you’re supposed to put a fan or small air conditioner inside of it.
What was the drive there like?
The most important thing I can say about the experience is that I survived it. It took four days to drive from Sioux Falls to Nevada, with a stop in Denver on the way. That video of Nevada was filmed on day 4 of driving, when the driving felt absolutely endless. Parts of the West felt like I was on another planet.
When I first moved to Sioux Falls, I was so used to living in the most densely populated part of the US that I would get agoraphobic and panic if I took a wrong turn and ended up outside the city with nothing but open fields around me. I had anxiety about getting stranded with no gas and no one around to help. I was so used to being around other people that when I stepped onto a completely empty subway alone in June 2020, I felt a bit panicked, as if the train was full of ghosts. The open prairies were a different kind of liminal space when I was still adjusting. It wasn’t the “uncanny valley” effect of an empty train that would not normally be empty (cruising through Lower Manhattan in the early afternoon). Instead, it felt like I was in the movie “The Incredible Shrinking Man” and simultaneously grasping the idea of the infinite and infinitesimal.
Somehow, Renegade Man was interesting enough for me to face my anxiety around open spaces by driving all the way to Nevada. I specifically remember the road into Colorado feeling like a spiritual awakening because it was so gorgeous, and I remember the road through the Salt Flats feeling like the matrix had broken and I’d gone off the edge of the Earth it was so desolate.
When I was well into Nevada, there was a sign by the side of the road about the history of Westward expansion. It described how the pioneers at this point of their journey would have been covered in dust, wearing ragged clothes, and still have a long journey ahead of them to reach California on the other side of the mountains. The trail was strewn with discarded items and makeshift graves of the people who didn’t survive. But then the sign put it in perspective for the modern car traveler: “You’re only a few hours away from California now.” To say it inspires a sense of gratitude for modern life to make that drive is an understatement. My biggest question was how anyone survived out there in past centuries. Even the technology the pioneers had on their wagon train was more advanced than what the Indigenous people would have had before the settlers came west.
The Black Rock Desert sits in a dry lake bed between two mountain ranges. On the other side of one of them is California.
I basically drove from one end of the country to the other during 2022. At the beginning of the year, I saw the eastern half on the drive from Rochester, NY to Sioux Falls, SD. That summer, I saw the western half to go to Renegade Man.
What was the point of this?
Going to Renegade Man tested many forms of endurance– not just physical, but also mental, emotional, and social. My travel partner was going through some serious problems that she was hiding from me at the time, and they were so severe it’s kind of a miracle that we both made it back in one piece. The temperatures were around 120 degrees “real feel” during the day.
I’m not sure why it seemed so important to do this during the summer of 2022. I had a car for the first time in my life and had always dreamed of doing the Great American Road Trip before. I’ve always been the type who wants to “see the World.” Maybe I was drawn to the sense of rebellion and freedom that Renegade Man represented.
I also was a few months into coming up with the concepts for “Out of Lockstep” at the time, and I thought maybe I’d find collaborators out there. Instead, the tent that was supposed to hold a few samples of the art immediately blew apart in the Desert wind the second it came out of the package. Zero progress on that project was made during this trip. I wouldn’t make any real headway on it until a few months later when I went to the Brownstone Institute’s Gala in Miami, FL. That trip was with the same travel buddy and also ended up being a disaster. In fact, only a few days after that trip to Florida, I knew that I would have to end my business partnership with the person I’d taken those trips with and learn the skills she was bringing to the table myself. A few weeks later, I was looking at the program at Southeast Tech.
What were the best parts of the Renegade Man trip?
I loved how out of the ordinary the atmosphere was in the Desert, the way it felt like there was a hidden side of reality being revealed and some grain of truth to every absurd story that people told out there. They described things like how Nevada used to be inhabited by red-headed giants with extra rows of teeth, and the atmosphere was so strange out there it sounded somehow believable. I could understand why so much ancient mythology is so psychedelic, but those surreal aspects of the stories resonate with people.
The way that light and sound travels in the Black Rock Desert is something I’ve never experienced anywhere else. There’s no light pollution out there, so the stars are highly visible, and whatever lighting design the theme camps have stand out in a way they never could in a city. From far away, the music sounds very clear, and walking from one sound camp to another at night sounds like the volume is gradually being turned down or up depending on how close you are. There’s no noise pollution and no walls stopping it from traveling. Some day, I would love to DJ a party in the desert. When I listened to a recording of “Walking on the Milky Way” by OMD out there, the sound was so clear it felt like it was a live performance and I was actually traveling through space.
I would say that I recommend this experience to anyone who’s interested in things like sound and lighting design and meeting an interesting cast of characters, but I’m not sure if Renegade Man still happens. From what I understand, Burning Man is also facing financial problems now, and for a long time the cost of admission for it has been prohibitively expensive for many people. But I will say this: I recommend a trip to the Black Rock Desert to anyone who has the endurance for it if that opportunity ever presents itself.