my (pre-)burning man experience
part I: when the time is right, burning man finds you
i'm going to burning man for the first time this year. usually, when I share this, people's faces light up, "wow! this is so cool. i've always wanted to go." or they look confused and ask, "what is burning man exactly? it's a music festival right?"
i'm curious about that first statement - "i've always wanted to go." it makes me wonder, why haven't you? i look to my own journey of finding my way to burning man and i remind myself: burning man finds you when the time is right.
for years, i've been interested in the event. about a decade ago, i listened intently to a co-worker when they shared stories about their experience organizing the budget for their camp of about 20 or so people. i didn't really understand what he was saying. what exactly is the budget for? how do you coordinate who brings what? i peppered him with questions - i was concerned with the logistics, found the sheer scale of the organization fascinating.
sure, ambling around a pop-up city of 80,000 crafted from scratch while tripping on mushrooms is cool. i won't argue with you here. but what i really wanna know is: how do you design such an immersively meaningful experience?
it took me the past 10 years to find my way to burning man, where curiousity got the best of me, and i was ready to engage with the reality of commiting to being a burner, if even just for a year. what’s dawning on me is, you can’t answer the question of how is burning man possible, unless you participate. fully.
here's the thing - i haven’t even been to burning man yet! this is my first year, and already, i find myself completely stunned by the beauty of the experience. indulge me, and listen to the tale of how i came to join BIGTIME, a 50-person camp pulled together for the first time this year...
~
i think a good place to pick up the story is in oakland, two years ago this month. dave and i packed up all of our belongings, save what we could carry around with us in my subaru hatchback Meredith. our stuff went into storage in las vegas, where we "lived" with dave's brother while we nomaded across the US for a year and a half.
maybe my interest in burning man was swayed after spending time road tripping through the desert during the summer and having several meltdowns along the way - it's hot as fuck out there. if you don't drink water and stay fed, things get real intense, real quickly. it's panic inducing, tbh.
alas, i survived the heat. and i was stronger for it! wow, this is fascinating, this desert heat thing, i thought to myself. yeah, definitely not for me. and then i'd find myself coming through las vegas, in 100F weather, nearly dying from the psychological effects of heat exhaustion.
again, i'd survive, and feel like i learned something along the way. something about survival, dealing with intense sensations, facing my own egoic reactions. life continued outside of the desert - most of the time, i chased a year-round temperate weather: san diego, mexico, LA in the winter and spring; the pacific northwest and the new england northeast for summer; and new york in the fall.
so we're in brooklyn in the fall of 2021, and it just so happens to be NFT NYC. at this point, i’ve been exploring the web3 scene for ~6 months with the relational gang. the stars aligned so we could meet-up with other folks in the web3 scene. it's fun to surf the waves of the universe like this, serendipity becomes a close friend.
it was an exciting beginning to my web3 experience: we were about to release the collaborative pixel art canvas game exquisite land, but first we were pulling together for another release around another collaborative social game: gm cam. balancing IRL life with living digitally isn’t easy. and getting to build and launch our projects in-person felt really good.
meanwhile, the larger web3 scene had one of the coolest NFT projects ever drop: loot project. the details are besides the point, the gestalt of the matter is loot is a super-powered creativity machine packed into an NFT game. and people were hyped about it. ofc a bunch of people got rich, but honestly, this is also besides the point.
the point, precisely, was we got to meet up with a bunch of other web3 internet nerds at a german sausage and beer house in brooklyn on a random night during NFT NYC in 2021 to talk about loot. one of those nerds was dave, another was this guy roger. let's fast forward in time - roger is now our next door neighbor in austin, he lives down the block a few houses.
remember: when you find resonance with the universe and go with the flow, crazy things happen and they happen quickly. here's what went down in between then and now - roger's got this neighbor, tony. roger tells tony about exquisite land after meeting dave and i. tony works in web3 gaming. i learn all of this in january 2022 when we nomad thru austin to "try the city out" and meet tony over pizza one night.
that was just the beginning of our relationship with austin, and tony; for the last year ish dave and i have been living in austin, and working with tony (he’s now part of the relational crew). and tony told us about his experiences at burning man. for the first time in years, my burning man radar was going off:
then, tony invited the whole relational squad to join his burning camp.
maybe this year is the year, i mused.
then, our mutual friend from relational, jon, was going.
hmmm, jon's going. maybe this year IS the year.
suddenly, after a decade of keeping burning man on the.. well, back burner, i'm here to tell you: THIS IS THE YEAR. i’m going to burning man this august. i’ll spend the week living out of the BIGTIME camp as home base. a camp i’m helping build along with 50 others.
i'd like to capture my first impressions and experiences here. in writing. before they begin to fade into the background of the actual week of living in black rock city.
teaser for part II in the burning man series: i planned to join the BIGTIME camp as a total n00b. yet somehow, tony* asks me to help him out with some of the camp leadership responsibilities. suddenly, i’m accepting the role of “people lead” without fully understanding what i’m saying yes to…
also, what does it look like when 3 burning man camps come together to become 1? half of our 50-person camp are newbies like myself, burning man virgins. while the other half have 2-10 years experience on the books. getting thrown into this coordination situation is… interesting.
*tony’s one of those people who consistently finds himself in interesting and playful scenarios. it’s fun to say yes to tony’s invitations. sometimes it’s a 2-hour board game, sometimes it’s a week in black rock city.