Anjanette and I had loosely agreed to leave around noon of the Sunday before the burn. We were going to drive up to Reno and spend the night at a hotel there, then leave super early the next morning and hopefully get through the gate lines into Black Rock City (BRC) at some point in the relatively not-yet-broiling part of the day. It was a pretty good plan, we thought. But you know what they say about best laid plans often going astray? Yeah.
I was running late with packing last minute stuff, and waiting for my parents (who were babysitting for the week while Josh and I were away like the awesome grandparents they are), and one thing led to another and it was more like 3 o’clock before I got over to Anji’s house to pick her up to go get the rental car we would be taking to the burn. We trundled over to the rental place only to find that they’d closed at 2 o’clock. Uh oh...what now? Anji was quickly on the phone to the rental company, who told her that the only place that was open on a Sunday where we could go pick up a car was either Oakland Airport or San Francisco Airport. Oakland was closer but for inexplicable reasons, would cost an added $100 or so to rent from, so we decided to go to SFO (about an hour’s drive away).
Once we got to SFO and talked to the rental agent, it became clear that the original “compact SUV” Anji had arranged for was going to be too small, so she decided to upgrade to the next biggest kind. They gave us some keys and we went to look at the car and found that it wasn’t all that much bigger than the compact level, and we found ourselves in a crisis of confidence that we could fit all of Anji’s stuff plus my not insignificant amount of gear into the car they’d given us. So we went back to the counter and asked 1) if there was a different model in the same tier that we could look at, and 2) how much more it would cost to upgrade to a bigger SUV. They all but rolled their eyes at us and said “sure, go ahead and take a look through the parking lot at these comparable models and then come back and tell us what you want to do”. So we did, but none of the comparable models seemed especially more roomy, and the extra money it would take to get a really big SUV seemed prohibitive, so we just gave up and took the one they’d originally given us, and drove back to Marin to start loading up our gear.
I am happy to report that after a serious game of high-stakes, car-loading Jenga, we squeezed everything in, and were finally ready to hit the road....except for a couple of things we had forgotten over at my house, which we were going to snag on the way out. By the time we picked up the stuff and grabbed some dinner and finally got on the road for real, it was around 9pm. We had a good time talking and hanging out on the drive, gossiping and talking about our hopes and plans for the burn. We rolled into Reno sometime around 1am, found our Casino hotel without incident, and crashed out after agreeing that our initial plan of trying to get up around 5am to continue our travel out to BRC was no longer workable under the circumstances. We would wake up whenever we woke up, and take it from there.
The next morning we were up and showered and out of the hotel by around 10am, and on the road to BRC by 11am after a quick stop at Whole Foods for breakfast and final supplies. We made decent time until we got close to Empire (one of the teeny little towns on the way out to the empty desert lands where BRC is built), where traffic stopped dead. And I do mean completely dead, not even slow stop-and-go. A whole huge line of burners in their packed-to–the-gills cars and RVs stretched as far ahead and behind as the eye could see, and we were all completely stopped, for what turned out to be approximately an hour and a half. It was just like being in the gate line, except on pavement. So we did what burners do: we got out of the car, stretched our legs, talked a bit to our neighbors, and tried to entertain ourselves. I had a harmonica with me and I spent a while playing the “stopped on the side of the road on the way to Burning Man blues”, and we fooled around with our cameras taking pictures and videos. Eventually the traffic started up again and we headed out. (Turned out that what had stopped us for so long was a backed up clump of RVs and cars trying to get to the fueling station in Empire blocking the one-lane highway. Lame.)
We reached the turn off the highway into the gate road around 2:30pm, and were all excited. We figured we’d make it to our respective camps right around the time things started cooling down, but with enough light to unload and set up. Yeah, we were wrong about that too. We wound up stopped completely dead in the gate line too, for hours and hours—by the time we finally rolled into the greeter station for our ritual “welcome home” hugs, it was close to 7pm. We went to Anji’s camp (Pink Heart) first, checked her in and unloaded all her stuff. Then we drove over to Sacred Spaces Village, found Josh and the Yaboogie pod, dumped my gear, and then she was off to find a place to park her car while I checked in. It was about 8pm at that point, and the sun had set and the city switched to night-time mode. I wanted to see it, but I had to get oriented first.
It was so great to see Josh after a week apart (especially because I’d been worrying about him and the storms he’d been through). He seemed pretty tired and a bit distracted with all the camp-building work yet to be finished, but he welcomed me and showed me the yurt that he’d put up and furnished and decorated in anticipation of my arrival. (I was sooooo grateful that he’d already done that and that all I had to do was integrate the rest of the gear and stuff I’d brought...what an amazing gift.) We also toured the camp (I’d come in through the back, so I hadn’t really gotten a chance to see the public area at the front of camp). I knew we were planning a HUGE step up in infrastructure design this year but I was jaw-droppingly amazed at how incredible our camp was looking. It was surrounded with and covered by unbelievably beautiful fabric shade structures, towers and walls all in warm colors of yellow, orange, red, purple (and occasionally white). The fabric designs were all based on sacred geometry and built by Guildworks (who also built our beautiful campers-only Dining Tent and helped us “skin” the domes). Our front area was surrounded by walls and had an arched entryway with our “Sacred Spaces Village” sign. Visitors generally entered through that front entrance (though there were side entrances also), and into a huge courtyard, covered by a gorgeous shade canopy and surrounded by fabric fencing. On either side of the courtyard were two geodesic domes (four total), each uniquely decorated by theme (Temple of Spirit, Temple of Mind, Temple of Heart, and Temple of Body) and each containing amazing visionary art and an elaborate altar. SSV provided a huge (and definitely woo-woo) selection of workshops, talks, and healing bodywork in those domes all week long, including my very own “Fly Your Freak Flag High” workshop (which I’ll get to on Friday.) Straight ahead at the “back” of our camp was a giant bulbous wooden cage with a trampoline inside it, which aerialists and others performed in. In back of the cage was a huge stage fronted by an altar, with a gorgeous ceramic Earth Mother statue in the middle and a whole bunch of candles and crystals and other sacred decorations all around it. In the daytime that area between the cage and the stage was used for workshops and presentations, and at night it transformed into a big dance party, with amazing DJs and musicians, super cool projections (by our new Yaboogie pal Evan!) and sometimes even fire-spinning. It wasn’t even finished yet when I saw it this first time, but I could totally see where it was going and I was really proud to be a part of this amazing offering to the citizens of Black Rock City.
I also got a chance to finally see our beautiful Temple of Renewal, all set up and ready to go (though it was still missing a fabric canopy over the outer shade structure, as well as the altar hanging I’d brought with me and the bottles for the seaglass guardian sculpture, which were still in Eileen’s RV). It was SUCH a prideful and gratifying experience to see the Temple of Renewal all manifested into reality, even if it was a bit different than we’d thought it would be (the main change being that since the dome covering it was smaller than we’d anticipated, we had to make the “vestibule” area outside it.) I was really thrilled to see it and couldn’t wait to take a shower in it. (Though as it turned out, it took me a couple more days to actually get to the showering part.)
After the tour it was time for dinner--luckily our amazing kitchen was also running late that day, being not quite fully staffed or built itself, so even though I’d gotten there so late, I hadn’t missed it. The kitchen itself (food storage, prep tables, refrigerators, stoves, dishwashing area, etc) was contained within an enormous 50’ x 50’ tent, and that was surrounded by an even more enormous white fabric tent structure made by Guildworks. The center of the dining hall was the Hearth, a huge pyramidal wooden structure with a cauldron hanging from it in the middle, and a spiral of flame effect underneath it. It had bench seating all around it too. Scattered around the tarp floor were a whole bunch of low, round tables around which campers could gather in groups of 4-6, once they’d gotten their food from the main serving tables. Also in the dining hall, in one corner, was our camp office (picnic table and shelving, whiteboards and message boards) and a small chill space with inflatable lounge furniture and a mister. There was also a small stage on the edge of the hall, which was used for announcements or other small camper-only events.
After dinner Josh declared that he was done with working for the day and it was time to change clothes and put on blinkies and go out on the town. It was our Yaboogie pod-mate Naomi’s birthday, and Josh’s birthday was the next day, so we managed to get a decent crew of Yaboogiers and some new friends that Josh had already made during build week to go out with us. We wanted to see the Temple, so that became our initial goal. But of course on the way there we got distracted with a few things...we stopped and played on the teeter-totter of death for a bit, saw a couple of art installations, and found a big snail-shaped art car to ride on. I spent most of my time on that art car talking to one of the burgins (Burning Man virgins) who was part of its crew, about Burning Man in general and about one of my favorite art cars, El Pulpo Mechanico, in specific. (She’d never seen it before.) One of my favorite memories from the year prior had involved El Pulpo, and I told her that story and encouraged her to find it at some point. And wouldn’t you know it, shortly after telling that story, we spotted El Pulpo himself, off in the not-too-far distance, heading vaguely in the direction of the Temple. So we jumped off the snail car and chased down El Pulpo, eventually catching up with him and his crew very near the Temple.
We stopped for a while to admire El Pulpo in all his newly re-worked glory, and Josh chatted for a bit with the maker, and then we all headed into the Temple to check it out. (Sadly, because of typical Burning Man distractions, this turned out to be my only visit to the Temple the whole time I was there...which is a big bummer, because it was really gorgeous and I wanted to spend more time there, especially later in the week once it had been written on and added to by the Black Rock citizenry.) The Temple this year was both beautiful and beautifully made (without any nails or screws!); it felt impressive and intricate and grand in the kind of way that makes you reflect on your own smallness, which is the basis for many a spiritual experience. There was a nearly full moon that night and it looked so lovely hanging over the pyramids of the Temple (it was kind of orangey, actually, because there had been a lot of smoke in the air due to the huge wildfires not far away in the Yosemite wilderness). I took a bunch of pictures, but of course didn’t manage to do the scene justice with my tiny iPhone camera lens.
Inside the Temple, in the middle of the main pyramid, there was a huge black basalt sculpture in the rough shape of a human (I’m talking about huge like twenty feet tall...I have no idea how they got it in there in the first place or whether they removed it before the Temple burned). It supposedly was inspired by the “Inuksuk” stone sculptures of the Inuit. (The Temple builders explain it this way: “An Inuksuk is an Inuit word for stacked rock statuary, often in the image of a human, used as navigation aids and to mark spiritual sites. Their traditional meaning is ‘you are on the right path.’”) The Temple builders also provided piles of small rocks around the open outside triangular frames of the Temple and its outlying pyramids, so that people could build their own Inuksuk sculptures and place them on the frames like shelves. I told myself I’d come back and make one, but I never did. L Truthfully, I’m not totally sure how the Inuksuk theme related to the pyramid and sacred geometry stuff, but regardless, it was a mashup that worked (just like Burning Man as a whole is a mashup that works—the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts).
Anyway, we didn’t spend much time at the Temple because most of us were still in first-night-out, “woo, see all the things!” mode. We decided to walk from there to the Man, because that also seemed important to visit sooner rather than later. On the way there, though, we started all realizing how tired we were from all the travel and the building and the walking, and we didn’t diverge much to see other artwork (too bad). We got to the Man and looked around and marveled at the incredibly huge, super cool-looking flying saucer base he was perched on, and found that there were slides coming out of the saucer that apparently served as the exit from the base. We really wanted to try them, but there was a huge line to get into the base (and eventually out the slides, we assumed), so at that point Josh and I decided to bail and come back to visit the Man another time. The others stayed, but we trudged back to SSV. Poor Josh was literally falling asleep on his feet as we walked. But we made it back safely and fell asleep almost immediately in our beautiful yurt, despite the incredibly loud, thumpy and repetitive dance music coming from the sound camp across the street from us (unfortunately, their speakers were aimed directly at us). That music would continue non-stop all week and eventually became just another part of our soundscape...one of the hazards of camping in a sound camp on the Esplanade.