From the Mind of Trevor Stone

A week before the gates opened to the public, Burning Man got hit with the tail end of a hurricane. At an event famous for harsh heat and dust, even a little rain can be a big problem. Black Rock City is built on top of an ancient lakebed, and when it rains the whole thing turns into remarkably sticky mud. All driving gets shut down, since vehicles are likely to get stuck and until they do they tear up the playa surface, making it obnoxiously bumpy once it dries out. Build week came to a halt for a couple days and from what I hear everyone hung out in camp, swapped stories, and posted amusing photos to the Internet.

When I drove down Gate Road on Thursday before the event, the ride was amazingly smooth. Once wet playa dust dries, it stays firm for many days. Gate Road, thanks to thousands of vehicles traversing a path only about a hundred feet wide, is normally a bumpy and dusty adventure; the dust from Gate Road often ends up in whiteouts that can blanket the city. So as I calmly rode on what felt almost like pavement and didn't see a speck of dust kicked up in the air, I knew it was going to be a great week for biking around Burning Man. I camp at 3:00 and C, and am intimately familiar with the 3:00 Keyhole being one of the bumpiest places on Playa. After we got the tent set up on Thursday night I biked over to Ranger HQ to pick up a radio, partly so I could bask in the wonders of a perfectly flat keyhole on the way there and back.

The first couple days were pretty much perfect temperature. I spent Friday naked but not sweating, setting up camp. At night I could continue being naked without shivering as I finished unloading the truck and headed to the portos. Monday got up to 99°F which made for a Mentor shift where we encouraged the Alphas to "ranger a lot of shade," but it wasn't nearly as oppressive as the 110° days from 2022. Tuesday the weather was pleasant again and my friend and I adventured around the city. Wednesday once again had perfect weather and I spent the day bicycling around art and tracking down delicious beverages. It was midweek and I could ride practically anywhere without holding the handlebars. Thursday brought a bit of a breeze, but remained a pretty good day for adventure. I was having such a great time on two wheels that I picked up an unscheduled Rapid Night Response ride-along shift, since Friday's forecast had a chance of rain. Last year I happened to pick the night of the four-hour high-winds whiteout for my ride-along shift, and I wanted to get one good-biking shift in, since there was rain in the forecast for Friday.

Friday morning a campmate downplayed the rain forecast. "Less than a quarter inch over the course of a day means it'll mostly evaporate when it hits the ground and won't be a big problem." I biked across the city for my shift in the ESD Dispatch building at noon. While inside the box strong winds came in, the sky grew dark, and it started raining. Hard. For several hours. A no-driving order was quickly instituted. Ambulences were spinning their wheels and medical response was limited to major issues only. A worrying call came in and the "Quick Response Vehicle" crew was dispatched on foot, walking slowly through the mud that sticks to your shoes and then sticks to itself, building "playa platforms."

After my shift ended at 6pm it was still raining and there was no way my bike was going to carry me anywhere, so I started a long and cold walk back across the city. I stopped to hold a perimeter around an incident and was thankfully gifted a trash bag I could wear as a rain coat. As darkness set in I trudged an hour back across the city, shaking mud from my shoes every few minutes. I discovered that walking through a pool of standing water was much smoother than stepping on uncovered mud. The next day I trudged back across the city for another hour; this time wearing my Keen water shoes that I expected to handle the mud a bit better. They too were a sticky mud magnet, with the extra downside that my foot could pull right out if the mud got a good enough grip. The barefoot, the socks-over-shoes, and the plastic-bags-and-duct-tape crowds were the winners of walking.

The media got wind of the shelter in place order and had a general freak out. People were calling Washoe County to find out if their friends and family were okay. Washoe called the emergency dispatch center on playa and asked if they could forward questions to us. "Not at all" said the supervisor; we have no more information about your kid's status than you do. The world freaked out, imagining a city of 70,000 burners running out of food and water, trapped in the desert. Meanwhile, the people of Black Rock City checked on their neighbors, joined the dance party across the street, and made large penis sculptures out of mud. Other fun activities included making fun of people who tried to drive out and got stuck in the mud. "If you try to drive out now, there's a good chance you'll get stuck, and you'll be last in the queue to get rescued when things dry out." I've heard that about 100 people walked to the county road (through a few miles of slippery mud) and at least 300 cars got stuck on Gate Road. But the only reason to leave the city was commitments elsewhere in Reality Camp. Pretty much everyone who stayed put had a fantastic time. The city was calmer, slower, contemplative. Gone were the nights of LED-draped eBikes speeding past while a giant art car lumbers past, blaring electronic music. Saturday, normally the night when the Man burns in a large and cacophonous ritual, everyone was left to their own devices. I hung out by the burn barrel, scraping mud off my shoes and enjoying the hoppin' dance tunes of the party across the street. People built tiny effigies, burning them atop their burn barrel, next to the drying mud dick sculptures. People took slow walks around the neighborhood and met new people, wondering if this was what Burning Man was like in the '90s. We were getting a little worried about the portos filling up, and there was a minute-long cheer when the pumper truck drove by after a couple days, but otherwise everyone was in excellent spirits. I spent Sunday afternoon on a walking tour of the inner playa art; a new experience for me since I'm usually circling sculptures a few time on a bike before riding of. On foot you've always got time to let the art sink in.

The stark contrast between the external media narrative of chaos and panic and the on-the-ground experience within the "disaster area," with people helping their neighbors and feeling a sense of euphoric connection, is a great example of the pattern described in A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. "Elite panic" is the phrase she used to describe the reaction of the media and government to a disaster situation, and those authority figures tend to assume the worst; that people won't be able to take care of themselves. But Burners have been practicing disaster areas for more than two decades. The spontaneous creation of community, the generous gifting of food, clothes, and other resources that Solnit describes in historic disasters are explicit values in the Burner community. We didn't so much spontaneously create community in response to a natural disaster as the sudden rain came to the spontaneous community we've been creating and disassembling every year.

By Monday everything was drying out. People packed up their camps, watched a two-day-delayed Man burn, and drove out in an orderly exodus. The Tuesday Temple burn felt a bit odd with so many folks gone and operations having already shifted to post-event mode, but it still felt like the somber yet joyous release of the shared space of hopes and fears, this time with an extra aura of awareness of the amazing experience we'd all shared.

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to do." -- my mishearing of "Me and Bobby McGee"

(Read my previous post if you're not into the whole brevity thing and would like a long-winded backstory.)

So here I am with 20 (maybe more) paid vacation days and a summer of high temperatures and high gas prices. What should I do with them? Here's a tentative schedule. Let me know if any look fun and you'd like to come along.

Memorial Day - May 24th through 26th

There's drumming at Bob's place on Saturday night, Boulder Creek Fest, and probably other interesting activities. Or I might take the opportunity to camp at Valley View. If you're planning a Memorial Day party and would appreciate my presence, please let me know!

Apogaea - June 5th through 8th

Colorado's regional Burning Man event. Should be full of colorful weirdoes. I might meet some people and join forces for the full burn. Or maybe I'll get the burning sensation without 2000 miles of driving and a week of dust, making a full burn superfluous.

Tuatha and Kan'Nal at Mishawaka Amphitheatre - June 20th

Tuatha features some of my favorite musicians from Dragonfest. Kan'Nal is a great tribal band. Put them together for a performance by a river on Summer Solstice and it sounds like a good combination to me!

Boulder SolFest (actually near Berthoud) - June 21st and 22nd

Organized by Double Rainbow Ranch and featuring performances by Lunar Fire (the feminine side of Kan'Nal), Tzol (the masculine side of Kan'Nal), Tuatha, and some folks not performing the night before ;-) If I camp the night of the 20th along the Cache La Poudre I can have a fun solstice weekend in Larimer County. I'm not tied to this one, though, so I'm open to other interesting solstice events.

Road Trip? - June 28th through July 6th?

I'd like to visit Glacier National Park before it becomes Ironic National Park. That probably means this year or next. I realize that driving to Montana contributes to the melting of said snow, so I'd like to make this a group (or at least paired) outing. Anyone want to visit the northern parts of the eastern edge of the rockies, stopping at hot springs and mountain vistas?

Dreamtime Festival - July 17th through 20th

I've heard this festival is a lot of fun, with elements of Burning Man, music festivals, and weekend workshops. Should be full of colorful weirdoes. I might start the week by visiting Conundrum or another west slope hot spring. With any luck, Paonia should have some tasty fruit I can ravage while I'm over there.

Dragonfest - August 6th through 10th

I keep saying "By next Dragonfest, I may have moved out of state," but it hasn't happened yet. I'm going to teach an introductory I Ching workshop, visit with friends I see once a year, and dance around a few fires. Who knows, maybe I'll draw down again.

Burning Man or Democratic National Convention - August 23rd through September 2nd or August 25th through 28th

Burning Man will feature tens of thousands of colorful weirdoes in the Nevada desert celebrating the theme of The American Dream. The Democratic National Convention will feature tens of thousands of political partiers in Denver celebrating the theme of electing America's first black or female president. It'd be pretty amusing to say "I'm at Burning man because my hometown is full of chaos," but I feel like I ought to spend less time driving and more time participating in the American dream when it lands on my doorstep. And if I do the latter, I can still go camping on Labor Day weekend. I'm not sure what I'd do outside the convention. I've thought about printing some "FREE HUGS" shirts and sharing human energy without a political message. I'd be interested in participating in some public/interactive political art pieces; I should probably see who got a permit. I could also get a video camera and act as an outside observer in case "Recreate Sixty-Eight" gets taken too literally. (I'm not sure why they named their organization after an event which featured police violence and the nomination of a candidate who lost to Richard Nixon.) How I feel about the convention will probably depend on whether Obama, Clinton, or neither has been anointed in advance.

Alternatively, I could say nuts to both and go berryquesting with mollybzz.

That should be enough to distract me from work for a while.

If I attend Apogaea, Glacier, Dreamtime, Dragonfest, and Burning Man I'll use 17 of 20 vacation days. If I turn Dreamtime into a full week for more west-slope adventures I'll expend them all. I should probably leave a few days free in case I need to fly somewhere for a job interview. So maybe I should ask for more time off as compensation. Or maybe I should put Glacier off until next year.

What would you do if you had a month worth of vacation to spend and might be in your last summer of residence in Colorado?

In a short while I'll head south for the extended weekend. My brother's graduating from College of Santa Fe and has some pieces in an art show down there.

I hope to use the time as a good four-day break from digitalia, but I might do a quick scan of my inbox. Don't rely on me reading anything until Monday night, though.