As he continues to visit the places he and his wife had planned to see, one thing is certain: Wentling and Noah won’t be limited by Wentling’s disability.

Curiouser & Curiouser:

Blazing a Trail For Accessibility At Burning Man

What’s it like to pick your life up and move to Black Rock City, Nevada, for the week? Oh, and to do it while living with a disability after an assassination attempt? Brain Waves recently caught up with Dr. Mark Wentling after a successful week at Burning Man, the week-long celebration of art, community, and self-expression that pops up in the Black Rock Desert, 100 miles outside of Reno each year.

The 2024 Burning Man theme, “Curiouser & Curiouser,” encourages people to embrace the unknown, the whimsical, and the mysterious. Celebrating life’s puzzles without answers and inviting the unknown over for tea, the theme might strike a chord with everyone learning to navigate their new normal after an accident, illness, or injury. It is inspired by the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. For Wentling, the trip was a chance to help Burning Man organizers take a test run at allowing service dog teams on the Playa for the first time in the event’s thirty-eight-year history.

Dr. Mark Wentling believes that when there’s a will, there’s a way, even if a person has disabilities.

He practices what he preaches, too. Wentling didn’t let being a 100 percent disabled veteran stop him from going to Burning Man to pay tribute to his recently deceased wife and father. He even made sure he could bring his service dog, Noah, along for the ride.

Wentling was demonstrating resilience in the face of unexpected life challenges long before this past summer.

Wentling was serving as a military adjunct in Cairo, Egypt, when, in 2001, an attempt to assassinate him and his family by Egyptian extremists caused a catastrophic accident, leaving him and his daughter with lifelong issues.

The attack left Wentling facing multiple mental and physical health issues. He lost a significant amount of hearing. He manages daily pain from a spinal cord injury that, despite multiple surgeries, is not fully healed. Mentally and emotionally, Wentling grapples with the ever-present shadow of combat-related PTSD symptoms that hover over his days and nights.

While working with the VA towards recovery, Wentling continued to serve as a civil servant working with the Navy. Despite the lingering physical and mental impacts of his accident, during that time, Wentling earned his first doctorate and led a large team. But when he needed a single day of telework a week, that triggered a federal law that automatically put him on medical retirement.

And just like that, in the span of a few days, Wentling was no longer working. It was another jarring setback.

“That was a hell of a hit,” Wentling said. “I was used to going to work, leading a team.”

Over the next three years, Wentling became a shut-in, never leaving the house. When he went grocery shopping with his wife, he stayed in the car.

That’s when his VA psychiatrist suggested getting a service dog. At the very least, the psychiatrist hoped a service dog would help Wentling cut down on the medications he took to manage his anxiety and nightmares.

“(Noah) can nudge me and alert me that I’m having a panic attack probably 30 minutes before I have one,” Wentling said. “So he can stop the panic attack before it even starts. My best guess is he is smelling cortisol pheromones being sweated out, so he knows that I’m going down that road, and then he interacts to keep me from going down that road.”

Noah also helps Wentling with his physical disabilities. To help with his hearing loss, Noah nudges Wentling when someone is approaching, barking twice—and only twice—if necessary. Noah’s special mobility harness helps Wentling keep his balance when walking.

With Noah’s help, Wentling has reduced his psychiatric medications by about 60 percent. Perhaps more importantly, Noah slowly nudged Wentling back into the world again, helping him to stop self-isolating and avoiding people.

“Noah kind of changed all that, broke that paradigm to the point where I started to get out, I started to interact with other humans,” Wentling said.

In 2019, Wentling returned to work as the vice president of an aerospace company.

But this year, tragedy struck Wentling’s family. In February, Wentling’s wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Although she was not expected to survive, doctors hoped that chemotherapy and radiation would grant Wentling’s wife at least a few good years before succumbing to the disease. But after her third chemotherapy treatment in June, Wentling’s wife went into cardiac arrest and never woke up.

Two hours after his wife died, Wentling learned his father had also passed away.

Blazing a Trail to Burning Man

That led Wentling to Burning Man, a large festival held annually in the middle of the desert known for bringing together a spiritually minded, artistic, global community. Although the days-long event has gained a reputation for being a Woodstock-like festival of excess and debauchery, Wentling said that was not his experience.

“As a first-time burner, my preconceived notions were shattered,” Wentling said. “Yes, there were people doing drugs and drinking to excess, yet they were not the majority. Kindness, mutual care, and respect for others are the common themes that hold this city of strangers together.”

For years, Wentling’s daughter had brought large art pieces to Burning Man. She had also honored family members who had passed away at The Temple, a large art installation where attendees gather to honor those who have passed away. Now, she wanted to go and honor her mother and grandfather.

Wentling was hesitant, not the least because he understood just how harsh the desert can be under the best of circumstances.

“Simply put, Burning Man is a hard struggle to tame a desert with a singular goal: to kill you,” Wentling wrote in a piece reflecting his thoughts. “It is unlike any deployment; you have a safety net and support in a deployment. In the Black Rock Playa (8-mile Playa) near Gerlach, Nevada,  you have what you brought in with you; if you did not bring it, you do not have food, water, medicine, etc.”

On one hand, Wentling was well prepared for a camping trip. When his wife was initially diagnosed, they decided to go on a bucket list tour of places she had always wanted to visit. To prepare for that trip, Wentling bought a new truck and RV.

When his wife died, Wentling immediately retired, deciding to take the planned road trip with Noah. In a way, Burning Man added another stop to a trip Wentling was already going to take.

Still, for Wentling and Noah, two weeks in the middle of the desert was a daunting prospect.

But his daughter looked at him and said, “No Dad, it’s not an option. You’re going to Burning Man.”

Ninety days before leaving for the two-week stay at Burning Man, Wentling contacted the organizers and asked if he could bring Noah.

“And it stumped them,” Wentling said. “No one had ever asked that before.”

“The Org,” as the festival leaders are known in the community, met to discuss the logistics of having a service dog at Burning Man. Ultimately, they welcomed both Wentling and Noah with open arms, creating what Wentling called “common-sense business rules for service dogs.”

Importantly, the rules were put in place to protect Noah, not Wentling.

With that, the trip to The Temple began.

The Temple is a solemn, deeply respectful place amidst what some have described as a perpetual party. It is a massive structure deliberately set apart from the general Burning Man area. It’s where “burners”—what Burning Man participants call themselves—place items and mementos to honor people, places, or even time periods that have personal meaning to them. Cushions scattered around the area give people a quiet place to contemplate and reflect. On a pre-determined night, The Temple becomes a massive pyre with flames licking the sky, the smoke and ash representing release and renewal. Even amidst the festival’s revelry, the sacred nature of The Temple is respected.

“It’s insanely quiet in the middle of a loud place,” Wentling said.

Getting to The Temple, however, proved a bit challenging. Though he wasn’t dehydrated, Wentling had depleted his body of electrolytes. The day of the night The Temple was scheduled to be set on fire – thus releasing honored souls to the universe – he was in a medical tent hooked up to an IV, replenishing his body with vital minerals.

“That was the night The Temple burned,” Wentling said. “I needed to be at The Temple. I needed to see it go up. That’s where my wife and my dad was.”

The people Wentling and his daughter were camping with—people they didn’t even know—helped Wentling get into a truck and to The Temple so he could watch it burn. Afterward, the new friends got him back to his trailer and back in bed.

It was exemplative of the Burning Man culture, where Wentling said the only thing that matters about anyone else is whether they are a good person.

That same generosity of spirt was extended to Noah, too.

“It’s actually refreshing to walk around there and have 100 percent positive response to my service dog,” Wentling said. “If I do that at the grocery store, or at a restaurant, you get these comments when you walk by, ‘Oh, they shouldn’t let dogs in.'”

And so, Wentling and his daughter were able to honor the passing of the family they had lost that year.

Differently Abled, Not Disabled

Camping in the desert for two weeks did not come without its challenges, but Wentling knew that it wasn’t impossible, either.

He runs several social media groups for veterans with disabilities who either have or plan to get a service dog. By going to Burning Man, he was able to lead by example and do what he constantly tells the group’s members to do: change the self-imposed paradigms of having a disability.

“The thing is, being disabled doesn’t actually make you less able than the general populace,” Wentling said. “The general populace may look at you and assign the label of less abled than they are, but you’re just differently abled.”

That’s not to deny reality, of course.

“If you’re missing a leg, you’re not going to run a marathon,” Wentling said. “(You can) probably do the wheelchair Olympics, though.”

His point is that “there’s always a way to work around things.”

“And part of that is removing your own self-imposed limitations because of this label you had applied to you,” Wentling said.

As he continues to visit the places he and his wife had planned to see, one thing is certain: Wentling and Noah won’t be limited by Wentling’s disability.

ABOUT BRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION OF ARIZONA

The Brain Injury Association of Arizona (BIAAZ) is the only statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of adults and children with all types of brain injuries through prevention, advocacy, awareness and education. BIAAZ also houses the Arizona Brain Health Resource Center, a collection of educational information and neuro-specific resources for brain injury survivors, caregivers, family members and professionals.

What began in 1983 as a grassroots effort has grown into a strong statewide presence, providing valuable life-long resources and community support for individuals with all types of brain trauma at no charge.