For as long as I have known about Burning Man I have wanted to go. Finally, in my 74th year, my wish came true. Back in May, when we were in Australia, I had been successful in purchasing a couple of tickets (it is a lottery) and we were now all set to go.
Of course, it is not a simple process to get ready for Burning Man. There is a lot of preparation to do - a lot of acquisitions - cheap bicycles, colored lights for the bicycles and for ourselves, a shade structure, flamboyant clothing, batteries, baby wipes, camp food, extra long tent stakes, dust masks, goggles for day, goggles for night, ear plugs, water storage, sun screen, etc, etc.
With everything in place we were planning to leave on the Tuesday morning for Nevada. However on Monday night the wait time to enter the playa was 7 hours. That didn’t sound like fun so we decided to delay our departure and drive up overnight Tuesday night arriving early Wednesday. However, after coffee on Tuesday, the wait time dropped down to 2 - 3 hours. That sounded much better so we quickly loaded the 4Runner and headed for Nevada and Black Rock City.
We were in Reno by lunchtime and after a quick bite to eat we were back on the way to the Black Rock Desert. After leaving I-80 we saw more and more evidence of the event. There were stalls selling Burning Man appropriate clothing, food, ice and, of course, there were bikes for rent or for purchase. Nearly all traffic on the road looked like it was bound for Burning Man and most of them were campers and trailers.
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| Entry to the Playa |
We passed through Nixon and by Pyramid Lake before reaching Gerlach, the closest town to the Black Rock Desert. After Gerlach it was a relatively short drive to the dirt road into the playa. We were on the dirt road by 4:30 and were making good progress until we got a mile or so from the entry gate, then things slowed dramatically. By then we were in the middle of 8 or 10 lanes of traffic all moving forward one car at a time.
Still, we were hopeful of getting into camp before dark that evening. That is until the traffic stopped completely. We got out and wandered around and chatted to our adjacent travelers. Then the weather turned for the worse, storm clouds came in and it started to rain.
The Black Rock Desert playa is not the place to be when it rains. The surface gets very slick and if you try to walk or drive on it you just accumulate vast amounts of mud sticking to your shoes or tires. It is just a big muddy mess and for that reason they closed down the entry gate until the rain had stopped and until the playa had dried out.
We settled down for a long wait. The rain continued to fall, not particularly heavy but enough to keep the playa wet. We eventually realized that we were going to be stuck there all night so we got as comfortable as we could in the front seats (the back was completely stuffed with our gear, food and water).
It wasn’t the most comfortable night but we survived. In the morning we stretched our legs and got to know a few people in the adjacent cars. We talked with Bill, a repeat burner from Auburn, who was towing his trailer and he allowed Diana to use his toilet. That is the big advantage of having a trailer or an RV.
The couple in the big RV next to us were from Colfax and we chatted with them for a while. They were third time burners and they gave us lots of advice. When they found out I was a geologist in earlier life, they asked if there was any room for “Creation” in my geology? Whoops, perhaps a little creationism in their beliefs. But, the surprising thing was, that when we realized we held different beliefs we moved on and continued our friendly discussions on other topics. They even gave us some cool gifts so that we had something to hand out at the event.
At 11:00 am on Wednesday the playa had finally dried enough for traffic to enter and the gates were opened and we started moving forward. At the gate we had our car permit and our tickets checked and then we proceeded to the “welcome guy”. He gave us our guides (a book with literally hundreds of “events” during the week) and gave us an idea of where to go for a good camp spot. We wanted relative quiet so he suggested somewhere around I or J, the outer ring of streets and 6 o’clock (the radiating cross streets are numbered as hours on the clock dial).
We found out later that new burners normally get to ring a bell and then roll in the dust. Since they were trying to get people in as quickly as possible before the next rain storm we thankfully missed out on that little ceremony.
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| Our humble campsite |
We drove around a little before settling on a nice space around 5:45 and J. We parked and set about putting up the tent. A storm was in the forecast so we hurried to get the basic area livable and then hunkered down for the evening. The rain and wind came and for whatever reason my perfectly good tent started to leak. I am not sure what was going on - the wind could have been blowing rain underneath the fly sheet, the fly sheet and the tent could have been touching each other, the tent maybe just getting old - who knows? Something was wrong and the future looked bleak if the rain continued through the night. Thankfully it didn’t last long and we survived.
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| Sunset on the Black Rock Desert |
There was the most magnificent sunset that evening - very colorful with dramatic clouds.
The next morning all was relatively calm and the ground was almost dry. We had a light breakfast and then put up our shade structure. We put it up over our tent thinking it might make the tent more livable in the daytime. No doubt it did provide some protection from the heat of the day but still the tent was pretty unlivable in the afternoon heat.
We set off on our bikes to explore the playa for the first time. The main roads through the camps were pretty rough. Once the ground gets wet and a car or truck rolls over it, it becomes like a cobbled stone road and it is very uncomfortable to bicycle through it. Once on the main playa, where most cars are not allowed, then the going got much easier.
The playa at Black Rock City is a spectacular area - almost 3 miles in diameter, with art installations dotted all over the place. In the center, the man stands high above the playa. There is a large temple that stands some distance behind the Man.
We visited the Man and climbed up the walkway to the upper level. It is a wonderful piece of construction. It must have taken considerable time to design and build - not to mention the cost. We heard that the prior year’s Man cost over $1 million and that this year’s structure was a more modest cost. Despite the lower cost, this year’s was a beautiful structure.
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| Fortunes beneath the Man |
There was a lady giving out fortunes printed on little wooden tokens underneath the Man statue. We queued up to get our fortunes - mine said “the perfect time is now” - I like that. There was also a robotic arm in a glass case that was painting a picture. Not the best picture but interesting how it selected paint from its palette and applied it to the painting.
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| The view from the Man towards the Temple |
A fit young girl was twirling a couple of hula hoops on the playa below the Man - she was very good and didn’t seem to tire at all.
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| Rose Wonders |
Moving on we cycled over to a rather impressive wooden sculpture of a kneeling troll holding up its hands. The piece was called “Rose Wonders” and it was created by a Thomas Dambo. It was a beautiful and interesting sculpture. We climbed up inside to stand in the palm of the troll’s hands. It became one of my favorite pieces on the playa.
We rode on to a beautiful orange wooden temple structure covered in flags - kind of a Buddhist or Hindu temple. Very colorful with quite moving messages on the walls telling us that life is a gift and every minute is to be appreciated - in the end we all die and we take nothing with us.
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| The Temple |
In the main temple, a structure almost as big as the Man, the atmosphere was quite different - relatively quiet and respectful. Many people were sitting in silence, many were addressing messages to loved ones who had died, many photos of loved ones were pinned to the walls. This structure and all its contents will be burnt as the last event of Burning Man, on Sunday evening, the day after the Man burns.
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| Steve, Jay, Diana |
We went back to our camp, stopping off to examine various art pieces along the way. We had been invited by an old friend of my friend Lee, a Jay Schaefer, to visit his camp (Camp BUI). They were planning on dishing up cake at 2:30 on Thursday afternoon. We found their camp and partook of their cake but we abstained from the alcohol. Alcoholic beverages are a popular item at most camps. It is the one thing most people can easily donate in the gifting economy of the playa. We chatted with Schaefer and hung out in his camp for a while and then adjourned back to our tent for a rest.
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| The Black Rock Philarmonic |
At 6:00 pm the Black Rock Philharmonic were going to perform out on the playa so we cycled over to the venue (at the Sphinx Gate). There were a lot of people there but we managed to squeeze in behind the orchestra’s percussion section. The performance was really very nice - not perfect but then the conditions were not perfect either and the orchestra hadn’t had time for many rehearsals. While the orchestra were playing at a fairly remote part of the playa, the pulsing sound of the techno EDM music was always present in the background.
The pianist was particularly good and she did a fine rendition of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. They brought in a choir for two or three pieces including a couple of Queen songs (Bohemian Rhapsody and Somebody to Love). Just terrific and quite emotional.
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| Night Attire |
We went back to camp for another rest before donning all our lights and heading out for our first night on the playa. At night many of the art pieces were illuminated and everyone’s bicycles were lit up with colored lights. People were illuminated too. It was a spectacle indeed with so much activity, so many bikes and mutant vehicles (the name for moving art cars and the like) zooming over the playa. The music too was everywhere - most of it EDM which I found hard to distinguish one song from the next. All in all, it was all very exciting.
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| El Pulpo Magnifico |
The most wonderful art piece on the playa was El Pulpo Magnifico, a giant octopus like creation which moved along the playa and moved its eyes and tentacles and spit out blasts of fire all in time to the music. A major engineering and design effort.
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| Philarmonic Concert at the Temple |
We were back in our tent before midnight but up again around 7:00 and off to the playa for yet another concert by the Black Rock Philarmonic. This time it was beside the Temple. It was another lovely performance with a soloist singing one of my favorite pieces, Dido’s Lament by Purcell. The singer was appropriately weird for the Burning Man audience - shaved part of her head, black bikini, thigh high boots. The concert master was also appropriately attired - wearing a dress and being a man. They also did Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue which is always popular.
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| Temple interior |
After the concert the cellist went inside the Temple and played some solo pieces for a while in that very solemn setting.
We rode around the Playa again, discovering new art pieces as we went along. In the afternoon we hibernated in our camp and tried to stay in the shade out of the heat.
Around 5:00 we went over to one of the larger tents for a talk by Rick Doblin on the current state of research in the psychedelic medicine space. Rick, who founded the MAPS project, is one of the leading figures in psychedelic research as a treatment for PTSD.
We didn’t stray too far that evening, but retired early and got up at 5:00 to see the sunrise over the Playa. Of course as we were riding out to the Playa in the dark, there were plenty of revelers coming home after their night of partying. On the Playa itself the party was still going on, the music was playing, people were dancing, art cars were still lit up and spitting fire into the air.
It was a beautiful sunrise and the temperature and the light was just right for viewing the art projects on the playa. We rode around for a while before returning to camp for breakfast.
In the evening we got ready to go to watch the man burn. We rode out to the playa and parked our bicycles near to the Man, but not too near. We also tried to park them near to something prominent and something lit up so that we could find them later. With so many bicycles, literally thousands, it would have been so easy to lose your bike in that sea of bikes surrounding the Man.
The BM Rangers had marked off the perimeter behind which everyone had to sit or stand to watch the burn. They were very good at keeping people behind the line and not allowing any encroachment. Apparently a few years back someone ran into the conglagration and committed suicide at the burn. They aren’t going to let that happen again.
We sat through an hour or so of ceremony - toga clad lantern holders and people on stilts, people twirling burning balls of fire at the end of chains, people juggling fiery sticks and things. It was quite an impressive show they put on.
Then about 9:00 pm we were ready for the burn. The statue of the Man, who had had his arms by his side up to that point slowly raised his arms and the show got under way. A grand display of fireworks was started with rockets and explosions. The sky was lit up with fireworks and slowly the fire started to consume the structure beneath the man. There were loud explosions and the fireworks continued for quite some time. Eventually the entire Man was consumed by fire and bit by bit he fell down to the accompanying cheers of the audience.
It certainly was a most dramatic show - the heat was quite intense and there were tornadoes of fire twirling out of the burn site and tornadoes of smoke moving across the playa. I don’t think I have ever experienced such an impressive fireworks show and bonfire. The only word for it was AMAZING!
After the fire we slowly made our way back to camp while all the young folk continued to party on the playa.
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| The morning after the burn |
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| Sunrise at the Temple |
We again visited the Temple and rode around the playa. There always seemed to be something new to discover, even though it felt like we had covered the entire area before.
We adjourned back to our camp and spent the rest of the daylight hours trying to stay out of the direct sunlight. Many of our neighbors were packing up to leave - Claire and her brother and friend, the couple from Bournemouth, the Russian couple from Cleveland who didn’t seem to think it was the best experience and wouldn’t be coming back.
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| Ready for the Temple Burn |
In the evening we set off for the Temple burn. This was a quieter affair. There were no Mutant Vehicles around the Temple and people just sat quietly behind the perimeter circle. The Temple burn started at 8:00 precisely with no ceremony. Everyone was quiet and we all sat in awe of the burning temple. It was quite moving to be a part of this huge crowd of people and no one was talking or shouting - we were all sitting or standing quietly.
Towards the end there were a few howls that traveled from one side of the circle to the other - like the waves they do at baseball games.
After the burn was over we slowly made our way back to camp. It was quite the contrast to the previous night. There were only a few vehicles or camps making music and everything was more subdued.
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| Dawn on the day of departure |
The next morning we packed up our tent and shelter and loaded up the truck. It was quite a bit of work to get it all in the 4Runner once more. Everything was dusty and grimy and we had all our garbage to carry out (not to mention some foul smelling toilet waste which we put on top of the roof).
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| The Exodus Line |
We were packed and ready to go by 6:00 am and we joined the slow line of cars heading towards the exit. As we got to the exit we joined 6 or 8 lanes of traffic which slowly moved forward. They were pulsing the exit which meant there were times when we came to a stop and turned off our engines for a while and then 15 or so minutes later we started again and drove further out. Slowly the number of lanes decreased to 6 then 4 then 2 until, just before the tarmac, we were a single lane.
We were on the tarmac road by 8:30 am so we felt pretty good about that. We made good progress over to I-80 and down to Reno where we stopped for breakfast - our first significant meal all week. Then it was a slow drive down to Sacramento with all the other returning burners and the returning Memorial Day traffic from Tahoe.
The clean up process was slow and a lot of work. The playa dust is alkaline and does not come off easily with normal soap and water. We had to neutralize everything with a vinegar solution or a Witch Hazel solution before we could wash things normally. It occupied us for the rest of the week.
There are many things we should have done differently - brought an RV, brought electric bikes, had more shade, etc. However, while it was tough at times, it was a wonderful experience. To be in a pop-up city of 70 or 80,000 people where everyone appears to get along, where everything within reason is tolerated, where no monetary transactions take place, where you can be cut off from the worries and pressures of normal life for a week, where there are so many weird and wonderful art pieces, where so many people are having so much fun is indeed an experience that benefits us all. We will hopefully be back again next year.
