On August 1, the Golden Spike was driven into the dry lakebed in Nevada that will become Black Rock City, home to the annual Burning Man festival. From there, teams of city planners, surveyors, and enthusiastic Burners will create a city of 65,000 people, complete with streets, camps, medical and fire services, art, and general shenanigans. And then they will erase it as if it never existed.
Chris and I had Early Entrance passes this year, so on Sunday August 23, we helped our camp owners pack our entire camp infrastructure into two moving vans (plus one shipping container that stays year-round in Gerlach, Nevada), and on Monday morning we left Phoenix and headed north. By Tuesday afternoon, we had presented our tickets at the Gate, and were cruising across an almost-empty playa to map out our camp.
It took until well after sunset to stake out the perimeter of our camp, as well as the outside edges of where our main shady space would be, and we hadn’t unloaded the moving vans yet, so we just slept outside under the stars on our air mattress. In the morning, the real work began: we unloaded everything from both 26 foot moving vans. We tried to group stuff together, such as kitchen items, tarps, camouflage netting, and metal fittings to make the structures, coolers filled with food, ice, and drinks, and the pieces needed for our Human Carcass Wash, which is our camp’s gift to the playa every year.
On Thursday and Friday, more campers arrived, so we were able to unload the shipping container that stays in Gerlach, which holds more of our stuff and the items belonging to our sister camps, Temple of Bacchus and the Twisted Swan Celtic bar. We got all ten of our coolers and our tools under a shady roof built in between the two moving vans, and then got started on our main shady space that our camp utilizes.
The first step was to lay out the giant floor pieces that make up our space. In the past we used heavy canvas tarps, but after last year’s “Mud Burn”, we needed to buy new ones. So this year we tried using recycled billboards that we got from a recycled materials website. One of the Burning Man tenets is sustainability, so we figured we’d try to use some things that didn’t need to go in a landfill. We staked them down, and then constructed the poles that make our walls and roof framework. We stretched the canvas tarps we use as roofing across the top, then raised them up. Last, we hung the camouflage netting on the sides, which allows in a breeze but gives privacy to some extent.
Once our shady spaces were intact, our camp started feeling more like home. We added in 50 or 60 camp chairs, hand washing stations, cooking stations, and our serving line. We unpacked our costume exchange closet (which takes up ten bins- we take our outfits very seriously), and put out two massage tables and all the blacklight art that we keep in our front area for general viewing. Last, we added “the man” artwork that was a gift from one of our past campers, and then the finishing touch- a series of lasers at our front entrance that play percussion sounds anytime someone enters or exits (always hilarious). A couple of bike racks, and set up was complete.
Happily, this year, all our construction efforts held up, even with some pretty good winds and one rainy night. Another week went by and then it was time to take it all down. Everyone pitched in, and in only two days’ time, it was all packed up and ready to store for the year.
In April, our camp will have a weekend party where we take everything out of storage, clean it, inventory it, and make a list of what needs to be purchased for the 2027 Burn. Until then, all that’s left is to put away our own personal camping items, do a big load of laundry, and look back at all of our pictures. For a look at some of the art from past Burning Man years, you can click on my 2018, 2019, or 2022 Burning Man adventure.
