Waking up with the New Orleans jazz still buzzing in my ear, I hobbled down the creaky wooden stairs to say goodbye to the India House and the city. The day was already hot and humid and I knew it would only get worse as we piled in the van for the penultimate stop in Austin, Texas.

I expected nothing from the Texas town, and when we arrived dripping and disgusting 13 hours later, I found my expectations blown away. We were planning on staying with a woman from couchsurfing.org, but sleeping through the cool night only to wake up and drive though the desert heat seemed foolish. So the trip was set to end as it began – driving all day and all night. But we decided to meet our host anyway, to thank her in person for offering us a crash pad.

Before we knew it, we were eating bizarre Korean candy in her apartment as she told us she was helping build an art instillation for Burning Man. She offered to have us go with her for a few hours and help. I shrugged – “whatever!” At this point in the trip I was down for just about anything.

And what a something it was.

We drove to the middle of a nice unsuspecting Austin neighborhood and walked into a rather ordinary looking house. But the house opened up into a wide backyard piled high with stacks of elaborately carved wooden panels a walkway led to an airplane hanger roaring with the clamor of saws. When I looked inside there were several ShopBots busily carving the panels I’d seen outside. Scattered around the hanger were other curved panels of wood that seemed to link together like a puzzle.

Now, I’ve never been to Burning Man, though my little hippie heart has always longed to be a part of it, but I did have a general grasp on the idea. It is a big art and music festival out in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, and at its conclusion most of the large scale art, including a giant wooden man, is burned. There’s lots of hoola hooping, and camping, and varying levels of questionable behavior.

And somehow I’d found my way into the back yard of this year’s artist, commissioned by Burning Man, who was building the massive “Temple.” From the small model I saw, it looks like it will be a series of rooms and passages made out of the carved wood panels with a mushroom-esque top made of wooden waving flames. Visitors at the festival will write or tape their fears or other things they want to let go of on the walls, and they will be burned away when the temple goes up in flames. And ¼ of a wooden faux flame spindle was glued and screwed together by none other then yours truly.

As we worked, my gluing guru Mack told me why he’d dropped everything to help build the Temple in that Austin backyard. “I just heard about it and really felt this is what I need to be doing. This is something I need to be a part of,” he told me.

The backyard studio was adorned with the signs of life that people leave behind when they love a place. The kind of comfortable leftovers and personal touches that make it their sanctuary. And the yard was a blur of sawdusted bodies moving finished panels, or piecing together spindles. Several in-charge-looking people told me what to do, and I got to work, forgetting the stiffness of the past 13 hour drive and ignoring the thought of another to come.

I was comfortable with the tools, after four years of building theater sets, and we worked with the dozen other volunteers under the florescent lights for over an hour and a half.  I easily could have stayed longer, and a part of me really wanted to. I could see myself there. Sending Dan home with the van without me. Tying a bandana around my head and grabbing a drill. Pushing away my constant  mental clamoring about where I am going in my life, and just being a part of “something”. And a part of something that for a few days will stand tall and beautiful in the desert sky and then be burned to ash. It was metaphorically overwhelming and I was heat drained and delirious.

It was like a little magic world plopped suddenly into my life - like stumbling into the Narnia of hippie communes. It was ironic and encouraging that one of my favorite experiences of the whole trip happened just hours from home in a town I’d totally written off the map.