Burning Man 2004
Part 3: A Day in the Life
Most of the daylight in Black Rock City is spent lounging in the shade, waiting for the sun to go down. Often it's just too hot to do anything else. This year was unusually cool. The temperature never got above the 90s, and we had no oppressively hot days. However, every veteran we talked to said it was the windiest Burning Man ever. Wind on the playa means dust storms. We spent a lot of time behind our dust masks.
As the week wore on, people continued to trickle in, and the space around our camp filled up. We enjoyed our neighbors; The Boa Babes, The Vulture Gang, an Aussie named Mick. An irritating and noisy family camped right next to us Tuesday night, but moved Wednesday morning. We had a typical leisurely breakfast. We'd been walking the Promenade in the evenings; the inside edge of town, around the playa, where the more spectacular theme camps are found. This morning I went for a bike ride in the other direction. For some reason I'm intrigued by the edges of this place, the boundary between Black Rock City and desolate wasteland. Plus I have a thing for solar system/planetary folklore. The ten orbiting streets of the city are named after the planets, and I got a kick out of following Sedna for awhile. I took in the non-theme camp sights, then headed back toward the center. I rode aimlessly around the playa, stumbling on mysterious monuments. This time I made it all the way out to the Temple, still under construction.
By the time I got back to camp the wind had set in, and we had constant dust storms the rest of the day. After lunch, Troy and I went walking anyway. There was supposed to be some kind of massive Lego event at Center Camp, but we didn't find it. Center Camp is a sort of community center, a large tented area with banches, stages, and the cafe. Later in the week we saw a wedding there, with everyone dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland.
We stopped at the post office so I could send a postcard home. It took me a long time to pick up on the fact that the guy at the window wanted some kind of bribe to mail my postcard. Lots of people carry around little things to give away. In fact, if you set up a mailbox at you camp, people will leave things in it. We received stickers, buttons, carabiners, and other stuff. But standing there at the post office window I had nothing but my sketchbook. I let the guy flip through it, and he chose a drawing of a car framed in the Boa Babes' geodesic dome.
We went back to camp to batten down the hatches, but there weren't any hatches. One corner of the Vulture Gang's shade structure had ripped away from its stake in the wind. We repaired it with duct tape and reinforced our own shade structure. The stakes themselves were two-foot lengths of rebar. They weren't going anywhere. That day a couple of our neighbors had to drive into Reno; one injured her foot, the other felt sick. It's no joke, you have to drink water constantly. Towards evening some clouds rolled in. We had a sprinkling of rain. The wind finally died down. We cooked dinner on the camp stove and hung out with the neighbors. When the sun went down, we got suited up and headed out.
The chemical suit never quite worked out for me. As I said before, I just wasn't into the idea of people writing on it, although I did draw a replica of Alyssa's banner on the back. The second or third night out, I discovered that wearing my assorted lights inside the suit produced more of a hazy glow, which was cool. However, early in the week I managed to rip out most of the crotch seam. I had other clothes on underneath, but I didn't want to walk around with big white crotch seams flapping everywhere. I patched it up with duct tape, but in doing so I somehow took out all of the slack in the lower half of the suit. Wearing it like that made me feel like a dorky serial killer. I tried unzipping it and tying the sleeves around my waist, but that didn't work too well either. I finally gave up on it the night of the burn. Next time, I'm bringing a better costume.
Anyway, we went back to the Promenade but went counterclockwise this time. We stopped in at Frolic's camp, who I had met on the playa practicing aikido. At the 3:00 plaza we saw some sculptures made up of orange traffic cones. We saw some fire spinners at a rave camp, and danced at a rave camp with a big green glowing cat head. We stopped to rest on some carpets by a big Earth floating in water in a giant nest.
I don't know how late we stayed out. By Black Rock City standards, we were on retirement home bedtime schedule. Lots of people are out until daylight, hitching rides on art cars, roaming and partying. But we dragged our exhausted selves back to camp. That night, although I was completely beat, I didn't want to go to bed. The air was still, the sky was clear. I sat on the roof of the van for awhile, watching a light show play across rising hills in the distance. Then I went for a short walk in the streets around our camp. A dance floor with flaming smokestacks drove by. I saw a long, bright shooting star. I felt like I was in a trance, like if I kept walking I would leave myself behind, and enter a new life of endlessly varying debauchery. But I was too tired, I went to bed instead.
My tent had been zipped up tight all day. Even so, the wind had driven a layer of fine dust through the fabric, covering everything inside.
