At sunrise on Thursday morning, 30,000 citizens of Black Rock City gathered in a giant circle around a Burning Man art piece called “The Embrace” and waited for something to happen. The 70-foot wooden sculpture depicted the heads and shoulders of a man and a woman looking deep into each other’s eyes. As my campmates and I watched, flames began to spill out of the eye sockets. The fire crept across their skin of overlapping wooden slats, setting their scalps aflame before devouring the two heads completely.

Like the arms of a fiery god, twin currents of black smoke extended above the bystanders on the eastern perimeter, raining ash and cinders down upon their awestruck faces. The blazing figures merged into one giant colossus, spewing flames so dense they resembled molten lava. Tornadoes of dust and sparks were conjured into existence by the hellish temperatures and unleashed upon the desert plain. These whirling demons danced to their own apocalyptic tune before fragmenting amid the crowd.