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What does it mean to surrender to grief?

Writer Nicholas Powers found out a few years ago.

At a place people sometimes say they find themselves

in the middle of the Nevada desert at Burning Man.

Those who are deeply curious, get a ticket, find a way there, and they drive through a dusty

city called Reno. And for the next, you know, seven days, we were in camp surrounded by other camps in a bright, hot white desert, and we would go out and play.

But Nicholas wasn't exactly in the mood to play.

It was September 2002, one year after 9-11. I actually hated Bernie Man because I was just filled

with so much anger after seeing my hometown swallowed up in smoke and the ash of people blowing

through the city and just seeing the incredible waves of grief going

through the streets people crying over photos of loved ones.

So when I got to Burning Man, people were happy and smiling and giving gifts and dancing and I just felt like they were dancing on the graves of of New York.

To top all of this off, Nicholas isn't even that good at roughing it.

He's a New Yorker, an Afro Puerto Rican who loves city life. By day seven, he was done.

And as he was packing up his things to head home, he sees out of the corner of his eye, guy he'd seen around standing over him he goes hey, are you from New York? I was like yeah, he's like yeah, my name's Tony and from New York too like I could hear in his voice his accent. He was a

Old school Italian New Yorker and he he said,

how are you holding up?

Yeah, I was like, uh, not so good. I think I going to get out of here. So he walked over to me and he gave me some ecstasy and he gave me some LSD.

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