Each year it takes me a while to warm up to Burning Man. It’s not like checking into your ocean side hotel after a long flight and throwing yourself on the bed. It’s more involved than that. When I finally arrive, I’m relieved to suddenly find myself surrounded by earth tones and space after leaving the frenetic pace of schedules and city traffic. But at the same time, Burning Man demands my attention. Among Nevada cities, Black Rock City ranks sixth in population for a week. A pop-up city that will disappear like Brigadoon within a month – leaving only silt and wind behind. But for a few days every summer, a community like no other comes to life. And it’s non-stop.
On our frequent trips to the Black Rock Desert, Tom and I often stop half-way up the long valley that once contained Winnemucca Lake just to experience the hypnotic tranquility. To most people, the bleak, inhospitable expanse of sand and rock we call desert is the very antithesis of civilization. The back of the beyond. But our long experience with it reveals geological, botanical, and spiritual wonders that have kept us spellbound for years. Nothing quite compares. In all that fantastic openness – where the air is so clear, the horizon clips off thunderheads 100 miles distant – you can literally hear a pin drop. Or a kangaroo rat push dirt from his den. Or a rock wren pluck a grasshopper from a bush. The sound of my own voice feels like a violation. Yet most Burners don’t experience that serenity in their mad dash for Black Rock City. Unless they need a potty break or lunch or get a flat tire, most burners don’t stop.
From Reno, it is 2 ½ hours of splendid mountain scenery. Long valleys of salt and desert brush collect runoff from rugged Paleozoic mountains of limestone, shale and rhyolite. And since western Nevada gets something like 300 days of sunshine a year, a brilliant cobalt sky is likely. Interstate 80 to Nevada 447 at Wadsworth. Then north to Nixon and the long ribbon of asphalt to Empire and Gerlach – the last outpost of society until the playa.
The grocery store in Empire tempts you to snag the salad dressing, batteries, or dental floss you forgot. Heaps of gypsum from the mine that support the town are a short distance away. A few miles on, the highway is simply a raised bed of gravel and asphalt on the playa itself – stretching off into what looks like infinity. You cross the tracks of the Western Pacific Railroad that have been there since 1905 and swing into the spaghetti-western town of Gerlach – complete with a wooden water tower and worn plank porches with bars that only serve whiskey in a dirty glass. Ten miles beyond, you turn onto the playa where you choose a lane among the 12 available and drive ten mph while reading whimsical remarks attached to metal posts that line the entrance, hinting at the merriment to come. Once there, the chaos of a different cityscape greets you with the muted buzz of moving vehicles, hammers, and the low thump of someone’s Spotify playlist. And enormous space.
Playa” translates as “beach” in Spanish. In the Great Basin (so named because it has no outlet to the sea), a playa is usually a dry lakebed whose waters only return when the severity of the winter or intensity of the thunderstorm allows it to remain. In the case of the Black Rock Desert, the playa is the bottom of ancient Lake Lahontan – 8000 square miles of freshwater – whose surface once rippled 480 feet above your head during the late Pleistocene, perhaps 25,000 years ago. It’s not at stretch to imagine that a four-foot native Lahontan Cutthroat Trout once swam through your camp. Lahontan’s beaches are still visible in the surrounding hills as long horizontal terraces best observed in the rich skewed sunlight of dawn and dusk. The lakebed that remains is a blinding white expanse of bicarbonates and silicates of sodium and other alkali metals – the silt and clay that make up the dust for which Burning Man is notorious.
We had left Reno early, found the roads uncrowded on the way, and arrived at the Burning Man gate with a handful of others: passenger vehicles, campers, trailers, and behemoth motorhomes that dwarfed us all. Aside from the reprimand I received from a gate official for leaving my car and chatting up the two cute hippies beside us, it was likely our easiest arrival ever. The “gate” is not a gate at all, but a well-organized gauntlet of traffic control where volunteers view your vehicle pass – already adhered to the inside of your windshield – and your tickets. They scan and keep the business end, and you are left with the part that displays the year’s fanciful Burning Man artwork on one side and exhaustive disclaimers on the other that require magnification to read. A short distance beyond, we were met by a tattooed, heavily-pierced “greeter” who welcomed us “home” with an enthusiastic handstand that exposed his intimate parts below his leather kilt. He gave us a map, a schedule, and a hug. We were in camp by noon. Unheard of. Entrance can last for hours.
We have never qualified as a “theme camp” since we have never offered activities that qualify, nor have we applied. Theme camps are those groups whose contributions to the festival are recognized and approved by Burning Man, and whose placements are preferential and made by the staff. You land where they put you. We prefer a bit more flexibility. Our preferences are not many: rigs positioned into a horseshoe shape, opening onto the street facing The Man, at around 4:30 and J. We like to be within half a block of the Porta Potties, but not too close. In the suburbs, so to speak. This year, it took a short bit of wandering before we found a 60 by 40-foot piece of blank playa for ourselves near the corner of 5:00 and Jackalope and arranged our vehicles and trailers accordingly.
The city is arranged with clockwork radial streets centered on The Man – Burning Man’s eponymous effigy – from 2:00 to 10:00 – on the half-hour. That never changes. This year, the concentric rings that connect them went from A to K. Sometimes it goes as far as M. The names of the rings loosely coincide with the year’s theme – in this case Animalia. Before we arrived, Tom and I tried to guess what the names might be, but whimsy apparently eluded us. What we imagined would be aardvark for A and goose for G became afanc and grootslang, instead. Whoa. The former, a Welsh-inspired cave-dwelling lake monster of mythology, and the latter a Dutch/South African serpent of lore coiled around a cache of gold and diamonds. Silly us, we should have known. We only got one correct. Jackalope just made sense in the desert, but it, too, is pure legend – a bunny/antelope hybrid peculiar to the old West and featured on tourist postcards. Similarly, there was Bigfoot, Chupacabra, Dingbat, Encantado, Frogbat, Hodag, Igopopo, and Kraken. Naturally.
Our camp changes in number and focus every year, and this year there were seven of us. Me and Tom, Bill and Steven, Mark, Cary, and Mary. Veteran burners all. We unloaded the gear that defines our camp and makes it comfortable: a 20 by 20-foot shade structure (by far the most important and time-consuming to assemble), various rugs, tables, chairs, bikes and bike rack, and art. No sofa this time. Instead, we had a queen-sized mattress and pillows that Steven seemed to enjoy. We are a small group with modest artistic accoutrement consisting of an 8-foot lighthouse modeled after Cape Hatteras – with a working beacon; a sign that says “Art Gallery” with a convex mirror for folks to view themselves in the costumes they find on our give-away clothes rack; and 10 pins and two bowling balls for play. Last year, Bill provided a large dream catcher, but this year his giraffe effigy lost its head soon after its assembly. In years past we’ve set up wind-driven apparatus to evaporate water. Although bars are everywhere, we did not provide one for this year’s burn.
Black Rock City immediately captivates. The activity is unavoidable and all around you. And when you arrive, you have already missed much of it. Bummer. Grilled bacon-cheese sandwiches this morning at Jalisco Bar? But we just got here! Where are the toilets? Hello, I’m Otto Man, your neighbor from Turkey. This is my first burn. Do you have a screwdriver? Rocky said he’s at Brandy Your Ass Camp this year. We need to find Barbie Death Camp. 7:30 and E? How far are we from Center Camp? I’ve never seen so many beautiful people. The Naked Bike Crawl versus Playa Choir rehearsal. What’s going on today? Let’s go see The Man. It goes on and on and on. Fear-Of-Missing-Out can hound you all week. Or not. It takes very little time to realize you can’t see it all, do it all, or be at every party. “Going with the flow” has never been more fitting.
The booklet you receive at the gate describes virtually every event that occurs at Burning Man that theme camps have chosen to include. We have been Burners for nearly 20 years, and I’m still astounded at the variety, creativity and energy people put into their experience. The map you receive at the gate lists every theme camp. This year, I counted nearly 1500 of them – each with an address, signature theme, and a wild selection of activities. Unfortunately, the booklet was organized by hour this year – not by day as in the past – which I found very cumbersome.
After we got our camp set up, we made our first foray into the city. This may require some perspective. Black Rock City is laid-out in a circular pattern with streets as described. But it is enclosed by a 9-mile (depending upon the year) perimeter “trash” fence beyond the city to catch blowing trash from littering the desert. First conceived by a man named Larry Breed (aka Ember) in 1996, it was a huge step forward in Burning Man’s leave-no-trace ethic. The orange plastic mesh fence is four feet tall and anchored by metal posts for the entire perimeter in the shape of a pentagon and designed to contain the inevitable trash that blows into it. Each of the five corners provides a point of interest to burners as they wander the city. As the main attraction, The Man sits precisely at the center of it all, and that’s where we went first.
We are always exhausted by the time camp is set up, so we anticipate our first-night excursion to be short-lived just to get a taste of this year’s atmosphere and art, then get some rest. During our early years of attendance at Burning Man, those short visits to The Man ended at 3 am after a night of complete open-mouthed amazement at the circus that engulfed us. Who knows what would happen this night? We pulled our bikes from the fanciful re-bar apparatus that I found at Twin City Surplus years ago that became our bike rack, and headed to The Man.
During some years, the roads are much like those you read about in western novels. Rough and dusty once you step off the boardwalk in front of the saloon. Muddy if it’s wet. It can take considerable care to avoid the potholes, ruts, and deep sand that rattle your bike or bog you down. This year – owing to an exceptionally wet winter that partially re-created the shallow lake that once existed there – the playa was better compacted and BRC’s roads were smooth and easy to negotiate. But the dust is ubiquitous, even without the wind. Thousands of bikes, pedestrians, and hundreds of art cars stir it up regardless, and becomes part of the air itself. On a clear day when you can’t actually see the dust, it’s tempting to imagine that you’re breathing only the crystal air of the desert – and nothing more. But at night when you put on your headlamp, you see the dust immediately as chaotic, minute specks of playa that flit randomly in front of your headlamp – Brownian motion through goggles – that enter your lungs, nonetheless. If you’re riding your bike and look ahead, you can see the dust hovering over the street – its particles reflected or blocked by the lights beyond.
My campmates think that my concern about dust is excessive. But the microscopic wind-whipped particles of silt and clay that make a “dust storm” are a potent reminder that the playa is a terrible place to camp. If not for Burning Man, we would never do it. Sometimes the heat combines with a crosswind producing playful “dust devils” – towering twisters of dust that swirl for a time then dissipate, delighting everyone who sees them. But when the wind is up the storms can be ferocious. Visibility can fall to near-zero and camps torn apart. They can last for hours. But allowing so many people to trample the surrounding landscape where dust storms are less likely is no solution either, so the playa is the place. It gets into and sticks to everything. But oddly, once my body is completely coated by it, I feel that I have finally “arrived.”
I can’t escape the fact that once in my lungs, playa dust just remains there. I know of no biological process in my alveoli that can effectively convert silicates to something more benign. So, I take precautions. N-95 masks or better. My favorite may be overkill, but it’s a 3M double-barreled face-mask with 2097 filter. It provides 100% PM 2.5 filtration – which means I can expect it to filter out all particulate matter (PM) 2.5 microns in diameter and larger. It also catches smaller particles due to static electrical effects between the dust and fabric. And it still allows me to breathe. Burning Man has been on the playa for 29 years, yet I have not heard of a pulmonary ailment peculiar to the event, but I won’t be surprised when I do.
As we rolled along 5:00, the familiar pounding of hip-hop, reggae, techno, and classic rock came and went – mashed-up into goulash – all competing for attention. Burners in all manner of dress – or none at all – rode bikes, walked, and hung out in camps along the way. The party was in full swing. I took mental notes to revisit some of those addresses later on but knew from experience that distraction is the only sure thing at Burning Man and I would likely not find my way back there.
Like it does every year, my anticipation swelled as we approached the Esplanade, Burning Man’s innermost street. And when 5:00 spilled out onto the open playa, the feeling was nothing short of explosive. It hits me like a gust of wind every time. It was already nighttime, so “electric” is probably a better term. Splayed out in front of us was a chaotic, swirling galaxy of technicolor. Rafts of blinky neon and morphing LED panels dashed back and forth or cruised slowly further out on the playa. Golf carts, cars, and pimped-out buses had become fully rigged caravel ships or an outsized Westy van. Gilded dragons spouted fire. A Dr. Strangelove nuclear bomb you can ride. A layer-cake Tower of Babel. A 20-foot Swingline stapler. A 40-foot yacht for dancing. A magic carpet. A silver spaceship. A palm-tree fringed tropical island with sunbathers. A troop of scooting Pac Men. A wandering lighthouse with working beacon. A small cottage. A medieval church. A two-story octopus with articulating arms that pulsed with flame. Most of them carry around their own compact music system. Re-purposed buses haul around massive banks of speakers to create a random pop-up dance experience where 500 burners dance under the sun and stars. These are the art cars of Burning Man. Someone’s imagination running wild over late-night beers in Cupertino or Omaha or Leipzig – that require a Burning Man DMV permit to operate. But that description hardly captures the variety, whimsy, and creativity of the spectacle when you leave the neighborhoods and find yourself dodging a glowing ladybug, a submarine, and a thousand bikes on the open playa at Burning Man at night. If drugs had their own video, it would look like this. Seems like it should be illegal.
Oh, drugs. Officially illegal, but consumed widely regardless. Law enforcement with drug-sniffing dogs attempt to stem the flow into the city by stopping a few unlucky rigs, but like speeding tickets on a busy freeway, it’s mostly for show. Some burners can’t burn without their weed, mushrooms, molly, or acid – especially the younger ones. Psychedelics enhance an experience already exploding with spectacle – beyond exhilarating. We know.
And among all of it are thousands of costumed participants going nowhere in particular walking or riding bikes, electrics scooters, skateboards and unicycles – pimped-out themselves in their own LED blinkies to be visible while they ride.
We lasted a couple of hours that first night. We were especially mesmerized by the exposed grand piano strings on the structure surrounding The Man that hummed in our booth when someone on the other side chose to strum them. We got our first taste of this year’s burn and couldn’t wait to go back for more.
The art installations are astounding – some best viewed during the day, and others at night – depending upon the artists’ intent. A thick gilded wooden door invited me to explore its mysterious carvings and fanciful hinges. Black Rock Station – an Old West inspired train stop – awaited travelers while a clerk stamped passports. Wings of Glory – an articulating mechanical Pegasus – glowed at night and was edged in flames as it galloped above the playa and slowly flapped its 30-foot wings. The creator of BitCube stacked 224 IBC (Intermediate Bulk Container) water totes that invited you to climb and marvel at its simplicity. A 50-foot tapestry that moved in the wind encouraged participants to examine a fiery climate break-down by day and a more hopeful future by night.
The aerial drone show was especially mesmerizing. Late one night beyond the Temple, points of light appeared in the sky that coalesced into realistic 3D images of a breaching whale and a howling wolf. I don’t recall the number I heard, but there must have been a thousand or more individual drones. All synchronized by its creator to produce an impossible visual. It lasted perhaps 15 minutes and was gone. Fantastic dance clubs disguised as a massive pyramid, an imaginative future-scape, or a forbidding medieval fortress line the inner and outer streets competing for crowds with throbbing two-story speakers, lasers, and bursts of flame. Hundreds of burners pound the playa in rhythm like worshippers before an altar before a bobbing DJ and their entourage.
It would be comforting to again sit within the towers of 2011’s Temple of Transition, or explore the passages of this year’s Tower of Babel, or experience the beating heart of 2014’s seven-story Embrace. Each are serious works of art. Those that survive are repurposed for future burns, find their way to private collections, or purchased or leased for public viewing. The Space Whale and The Portal of Evolution butterfly sculpture sit beside the Truckee River in Reno today, and the graceful petals of the Guardian of Eden grace the campus of a local community college. The three transcendent, metallic iterations of the Bliss Project – in beautifully-rendered, emotive 45-foot poses – exhilarate observers in Las Vegas, San Leandro, and Petaluma.
Among the big showy pieces are less conspicuous inspirations in the form of shadow-boxes, art galleries, dioramas, stand-alone sculptures, random performances, and pieces you sit among for self-reflection. After nearly 20 years of burns on the playa, the art still blows me away. Some of the best is housed below the Man itself – winding stairs and viewpoints, intricate mazes, interactive art pieces, provocative performance, and profound, eclectic music.
Much of the art is burned during the week, but the Man and the Temple are the main events. We missed both of them this year because of the rain, usually burning Saturday and Sunday nights, respectively. The Man burn is a festival like no other. Art cars gather in the early evening creating a crowded ring around the Man where 50,000 noisy revelers gather to watch fire dancers and fireworks before the first fire is lit under structure below the 40-foot effigy. Within 20 minutes, the entire construction becomes the most massive bonfire you have ever seen with tremendous flames licking the sky 300 feet overhead, and fire twisters dancing into the night. Once the structure topples, a dance party like no other rages until dawn – explosive light, pounding rave, and ecstatic thousands.
The Temple burn is a different experience entirely. All week, people trickle in and out absorbing the sacred, remarkable climate of veneration. They sit in silence, write on the walls, and leave mementoes to those they love. When it burns, the multitude watches in solemn and respectful reverence as their personal tributes vanish in the flames. Each temple is unique. A profound statement of its creators, it is an essential part of every burn.
We have attempted to do Burning Man “better” each year, and burners jokingly claim that “next year was the best year ever.” Each of us has found our own bliss among the madness. I sing with the Playa Choir for Sunday services – sunrise at the temple, and mid-day at their dome. This year we also sang a piece with the Black Rock Philharmonic for perhaps a thousand people in a dust storm at the Chapel of Babel. Tom helps peddle ice at Camp Arctica. He has an easy schedule to remember. Three hour shifts every third day at three o’clock plaza at three o’clock in the afternoon. Steven has been a greeter and temple guardian. Bill was once a lamp-lighter. And Cary drives a piano.
People hear that the festival is only for the rich. I don’t claim to know the complete statistics, but I suspect that most participants are of modest means. Nevertheless, the well-heeled find their way to Burning Man like they find their way to other recreational or leisure pursuits anywhere. It’s always been that way. Other burners call those pampered experiences “plug-and-play” because the those participants do little for themselves to prepare for it. They’re not completely wrong. My neighbor actually got free tickets to BM for seven years by delivering fully-stocked motorhomes to burners who fly into Black Rock City in private planes to the fully functional TSA-staffed airport (FFA identifier, 88NV) for the duration of the event. Folks I know love to criticize them for the walled-off motorhome parks and large generators, and their lack of community spirit, but a gated community in the default world is really no different. I begrudge them for none of it. Everyone’s experience is unique, and that’s the point.
That said, my goodwill has its limits. We had neighbors this year who didn’t understand the concept of community, nor honor the quiet area and rules for noise that Burning Man designates for neighborhoods like ours. I can’t be charitable to the douche-bag morons who blasted their shitty hip-hop rap and dreadful karaoke at our camp so loudly that a conversation inside our camper was difficult – and outside impossible. Forget sleeping. Bill and I went over three times each to talk some sense into them. He even tried to unplug their amplifier on one attempt. But our repeated attempts to get them to turn the music down only brought a hazy, drugged-out “Just party with us, man!” Fuck that, sloppy drugged-up hippy bitch. I hope your wheels fall off on the way home. They didn’t get it. Not at all.
But most burners do get it. Camaraderie and goodwill are universal. Independence and cooperation live side-by-side. Burners not only want their own good time, but they groove on that of others’ good time. Revelers hammer away in gladiatorial faux combat at Thunderdome while a hundred others cling to the steel mesh overhead urging them on. They meditate alone in the deep playa beyond the Temple or balance chakras in community yoga. Neighborhood gatherings invite you to meet and greet, drink and dance, care and share. A random, intimate conversation with a stranger can both captivate and arouse. All art installations aside, it’s mostly about the people who share the experience with you.
Without question, the most unusual thing about the 2023 burn was the rain. It’s not like rain on the playa was never considered. Every time Tom and I camp in the Black Rock Desert, and a thunderstorm rumbles in the distance, or a forecast gives us a percentage chance, we imagine the mess it would make on the playa. If not for Burning Man, we never camp on the playa itself. Besides, it has rained before. Everyone mentions 2014. But that year, the rain came early in burn week, it wasn’t much, and it didn’t last. This year, it came at the end of the week – nearly three-quarters of an inch of it. The weather had been brilliant all week, and we experienced only one day of dust. Anywhere else, wet ground would not be a problem. But when the playa gets wet, it gets sticky. Really sticky. Burning Man is wild good fun, but an ancient lake basin of silt and clay is no place for 80,000 people to party if rain happens. With a little moisture, the dependably hard playa gets slick, and begins to stick to your bicycle tires. With a little more, it becomes a paste, and you must stop because bicycle tires are mud magnets. In fact, everything stops. You are suddenly very stuck in the stickiest muck you have ever experienced. It adheres to everything. No driving or biking. Only walking… and that with difficulty. The dust I hated breathing on Thursday turned to goo on Friday afternoon and Play-do by Saturday. My boots gathered several pounds of the stuff as I walked and I used a metal spatula to remove it… over and over again. After some experimentation, plastic bags duct-taped to feet was promising, but I found that socks over shoes gave the best results. Good support and minimal stickage. Still, what a mess.
Probably the most surprising result of Friday’s rain was how it cleaned the air. Suddenly, there was no dust. The water had captured all of it. Distant mountains were as clear as the mud at my feet. I put my mask away and savored lungs full of dust-free air. For a festival infamous for its dust storms, and last year’s non-stop wind, dust, and sweltering heat for comparison, the contrast couldn’t have been more stark. Cool. Calm. Clear. Muddy.
After the rain, announcements over BMIR radio pleaded with burners not to drive anything at all – private vehicles, art cars, bikes, scooters – to prevent getting stuck. They stressed that people shouldn’t try to leave the city. “The gates are closed both coming and going,” we were told. They hesitated to use the term “shelter-in-place” for fear of inciting panic, I suspect, but that’s basically what we were instructed to do. The sudden immobility was quite a novelty. We didn’t venture far. Couldn’t, really. But it was clear that the alcohol continued to flow and the DJs still pumped out sets. The festivities were going full steam – animated by the curiosity of mud. And why not? When do adults ever get a chance to frolic in a rainstorm slipping around in thick brown glop?
Sent home early from his ice-pushing duties at 3 o’clock plaza on Friday afternoon, Tom was astounded to see that what he thought was a light rain had turned the streets to an impassable bog. Biking back to camp wasn’t possible, and leaving behind the free block of ice he was awarded for his efforts, he began the long trek back to camp. Rolling his bike through the mud lasted only a short time because the gaps between brakes, wheels and forks mucked up quickly. Too heavy to carry, pushing the bike became the only option. Struggling with his burden, not far along G, Tom suddenly found himself surrounded by a group of young revelers, who, apparently found a man with a bike caked in mud irresistible. Naked as the day they were born and higher than the mountains around us, eight nubile Gen-X pixies danced around him – cavorting and laughing with unbridled enthusiasm. The beautiful strangers spent a minute or so delighted by this new curiosity, teasing and rollicking playfully until the spell was broken. As their focus for that brief time, Tom soaked it all up with amusement until their attention sent them skipping off to other adventures. A profound Burning Man moment, he told us later. Half a block away, fighting with his cumbersome bike, he was noticed by a man at a random camp at 4:00 and H who hollered at him to leave his bike with them and have a beer. He did both, got his energy back, and continued the slow slog through the messy city streets.
I was not feeling so carefree. Had they known what I was thinking, people would have told me to lighten up. Have a cocktail. Go dancing. It’s only temporary. But it was clear to me that we were suddenly very, very isolated. Only emergency vehicles in and out. As if a humanitarian crisis in slow-motion was unfolding – one that could turn ugly very quickly. I watched some principled young hippy nearly get run over as he stood in front a departing truck trying to prevent him from driving on the saturated roads. Angry words were building to a physical altercation when he finally stepped aside. I began to wonder how many days it would take for the party to abate and the cannibalism to set in. I imagined impulsive, panicked burners making a break for the hills, ending in deep footprints leading away from their stranded Toyota Corolla. Later that evening, Tom said soberly, “This could get very bad.” Someone will surely make a film of this.
I wanted to find playfulness in the unusual circumstances, but the sudden limit on our movement and zero prospect for help from the outside world kind of scared the party out of me. The rain forecast for Sunday could plunge the city into uncharted regions of desperation, and I didn’t want to see what that looked like. I kept thinking that Burning Man and the Bureau of Land Management certainly must have a contingency plan filed away somewhere, and that will soon be implemented. Food and water were probably not an immediate concern. There’s an abundance of both at Burning Man, and sharing and caring are themes throughout Black Rock City. But how would authorities deal with tens of thousands of revelers who need to poop? The hundreds of Porta Potties that are strategically-placed side-by-side in rows of 20 every few streets are emptied every day by truck, but with impassable roads, the trucks couldn’t get in to empty them. Fortunately, the black-water tanks in our RVs were pumped out the day before it rained, so we had space. But for most burners who don’t have the luxury of their own toilets, the banks of Burning Man toilets are their only option. And they were quickly filling and becoming unusable.
Like me, the others in our camp were not keen to see what might happen if official exodus from the festival was delayed by more rain. According to BMIR radio, the gate was officially closed in both directions, but we were camped close enough to the exit to see vehicles leaving. And the occasional rigs that passed in front of our camp were clearly on their way home. Mixed messages. The public service announcements on the radio said to stay put. Don’t drive. Wait for the playa to dry out. Don’t expect to leave until Monday afternoon at the earliest. Don’t be THAT guy who gets stuck, needs help, and creates a traffic jam. But, departing vehicles and a bit of recon on our part suggested that if you have a 4WD vehicle and want to attempt it (wink wink), no one is going to stop you. Under these conditions – and in spite of the “gate closed” messaging – the Bureau of Land Management and the Pershing County Sheriff Department want you off the playa but they weren’t going to encourage it. Especially for the thousands of vehicles who would certainly get stuck without four-wheel drive.
Wary of the rain forecast for Sunday, we made a camp decision. If the skies allowed the playa to dry sufficiently on Saturday and it doesn’t rain that evening, we would attempt our departure first thing Sunday morning. So we packed up camp on Saturday and hoped for the best. There was still standing water in places, but the playa was noticeably less sticky after 24 hours. That night, the occasional raindrop felt like the coming deluge that would certainly cancel our plan. But we got no rain overnight and made the escape at first light as lightning flashed in the distance.
Playa conditions weren’t great as we left the city along with a slow trickle of others. We weren’t the only people who wanted out. Cars, motorhomes, and trailers were stuck along the way, but to stop and offer help in those conditions would have threatened our own exodus. The refugees who I imagined would abandon their stranded vehicles and walk out were, indeed, slogging through the mud beyond the perimeter fence toward “shore,” or hitchhiking along the road with backpacks. But we literally had no room for anyone else and didn’t stop. With mounting anxiety that we would also get stuck, we kept playa-daddy Cary in our sites, kept our speed up, and slipped and slid, pushed through deep puddles, and got around stranded vehicles over something like solid ground for the two miles to pavement before 8 am. It took us perhaps half an hour. We thanked our good fortune – even more so as we saw Sunday’s rain developing on the drive home. With some planning and a great deal of luck we jumped through the first open window we saw and landed on our feet. Thousands of people chose to leave early, and that decision produced understandable reprimands from those in charge. “You were part of the problem,” a friend and Burning Man insider told me. She was right, but we felt that we had no choice. When exodus was officially allowed the next day, covering those two miles took up to 12 hours.
The press took great liberties with Burning Man this year. It was international news. I was surprised to receive a text from a friend in Croatia asking if I was safe. I wondered how that could be news there. But when I looked, I found it on the front page of The Guardian and near the top on the Washington Post and the New York Times. Headlines emphasized the calamity that it must be: “Burning Man Fiasco.” Thousands Stranded at Rained-out Burning Man.” “Debacle on the Playa.” In fact, it was none of those things for the majority of participants. We had a great week but left with the threat of more rain. Those who stayed reported experiences unexpected and sublime as the city’s pace slowed to a walk after the rain. “Best burn ever,” I heard repeatedly. The immediate neighborhood became more intimate. Neighbors tighter. Many reported that they wouldn’t have missed it for anything. We had a great time.
Burning Man 2023 will provide much ammo for BM critics, but the millions of burners who have helped create this remarkable cultural experiment over 37 years will be undeterred. People will have stories to tell, and once the dust settles on 2023, so to speak, there will be some serious discussion among the players about the shape of Burning Man in the future.
Michael Scott Meinert 
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