I’ve been lazy about keeping this journal and it may be too late to keep up with the events of the week now, but I’ll try.

On Tuesday night, I was still becoming acclimated. Dinner consisted of Meals Ready to Eat (simply add boiling water) that were delicious. Erin observed that [Burning Man] was Luxury camping. Compared to backpacking – or shorter camping trips requiring fewer supplies, indeed it is. Everything about Burning Man is elaborate. Adam Leeds told me that when we were leaving California, he believed that Mary, Vinay and myself had brought too many things and supplies. However, upon arrival and throughout the week, he not only realized that we had brought only a moderate amount of tents/chairs/food, but that playa survival became infinitely more comfortable with more shade structures, comfortable places to sit and cooking infrastructure. Living in Black Rock City isn’t camping – it’s setting up a life, albeit a temporary one.

n the evening following dinner, I went out with Mary, Zach and Vinay. We walked around the playa and Esplanade (the innermost street circling the playa) at night. We caught an art car across the desert but we were all very tired from our late arrival the night before. We came back to camp at 11 pm and essentially crapped out. It is very cold at night in the desert. I didn’t notice the temperature drop the first night – perhaps because it was an extraordinarily warm night, or perhaps because we had not yet experienced the daytime heat in contrast. San Francisco was cold and I kept my sweater on for most of the drive here.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up at 8:30 with a yearning for the porta potty. I find it difficult to sleep late, by which I mean much past 9 am, because of the light, the heat in the tent and the noise of people who have either been up all night or who have also been awakened by the aforementioned items. A few members of our camp have taken to sleeping outside on the mattresses that Mary, Vinay and I brought, but I like the minor protection afforded by the tent from blowing dust. I also have a fear of being stepped on by a wayward burner wandering home in the dark and the tent does much to quell that fear. I still haven’t managed to sleep during the day.

I felt very good when I woke up. Some of the others have complained of morning headaches and I have given them almost all of my Advil. I’m sure that water would do the trick as well, but if a few over the counter pills encourage them to feel better faster, so be it. As per usual, it seems as though I brought an entire drugstore’s worth of Advil, band aids, moisturizer, chapstick and other sundries.

That morning, a nearby Canadian camp served breakfast. We waited on line for an hour, but we talked to others in the line and enjoyed a hula hoop performance. The pancakes were delicious and well worth the wait. The next order of business, gleaned from the overwhelming but still incomplete What Where When guide was Blood Mary camp. On our way, we encountered the Liquid Latex Lounge and never made it to drinks. The LLL sounded fetishized and not to my taste, but it was actually quite tame. Liquid latex is simply latex paint – but when it dries on your skin, it clings like a garment. Mary and I painted our arms and chatted in the barren shade structure with man who manufactures it. We took a few pictures and were on our way.

We made our way back to camp under the unforgiving midday sun and found Erin and her freshman year of college roommate, Gaea. I had met Gaea years before when I visited Erin at Cornell my senior year of high school. Gaea moved back to Ithaca as a resident artist in her dorm, Risley (the arts dorm). I very much enjoy observing the intricate web of connections between people who show up at Burning Man.

Erin had suffered terrible blisters on her feet while wandering around on Tuesday and had planned to spend the entire day in the tent, resting her feet. We convinced her to put on 3 pairs of socks and to come with us to Center Camp. It was Mary’s birthday and she wanted to take the shuttle to Gerlach to use a payphone to call her parents. Gaea wanted to get latkes at a camp on the way, but we left her because the line was too long. Why wait for a latke when there was FREE ICE CREAM – yes, ice cream in the desert – in Center Camp. It was Ben and Jerry’s, served by Ben himself. The ice cream was such an event that we ran into most of our camp there: Vinay, Danny, and many others.

We stayed in Center camp briefly and Mary left to take the shuttle to Gerlach. Erin, Danny and myself trekked back to camp slowly. In search of shade and a comfortable place to rest, we found a camp called Frogma with a lovely geodesic dome and couches. The people were lovely.

(I must take a moment now to comment on how awful my handwriting and sentence structure must be now. Let me finish describing this day and pause – people are talking and getting ready to go out and it is distracting. I’ve also had a smidge to drink and two different varies of brownies to eat so it is more difficult than usual to create beautiful prose. )

The residents of Frogma gave us Arizona ice tea, which felt delightful on my sore throat. The alkali playa dust can cause chemical burns on one’s skin, and trace amounts of it have contaminated all of my nalgenes. My throat is fine, but there is a dull ache whenever I drink my water. The ice cold, sweet CLEAN tea was soothing. Frogma inquired as to how Erin, Danny and myself knew each other – a common question when people asked where we were from and three disparate answers were given: New York, Arizona, Southern California. As it turns out, one of the Frogma members was also a CTYer in the 80s. Burning Man seems like a logical place to find CTY alums. The kindred spirits of creativity and community that made me return to CTY year after year are both alive and well in the desert. Frogma shared their concept of word of the day with us and we of course shared “Camp in the out hole.” As in, the playa goes IN the OUT hole. Eventually we headed home and met up with the others in our camp.

I was in the process of cleaning my feet and dreaming about making my ramen noodles for dinner when the dust storm hit. It became was windy, cold and impossible to see or breath freely. As we had been told, dust storms can create white out conditions. Still, I hadn’t quite believed it until I saw it with my own eyes. Vinay, Erin and I retreated to our tent and sat to wait it out. Vinay fell asleep while Erin and I discussed substance abuse and our boyfriends (mutually exclusive – not substances abused by our boyfriends). Erin told the story of “the place” in a cave in Ithaca. I’d heard mention of it before, but it remains a good story. After the dust storm, I ate some dry ramen. Apparently, some people think eating dry ramen is unappetizing, but Max agreed that it was delicious. Others commented that Max condoning any sort of behavior doesn’t make it “normal” by any stretch of the imagination. I’m amused.

After dinner, Vinay, Zach and I bundled up in Zach’s costumes. I can’t imagine that I looked that glamorous, but in my opinion, Burning Man is about wearing what makes you comfortable – be it a flashy glittery ensemble or simply pants and a few sweaters. I headed out with Danny, Zach and Vinay. We hit two dance camps for about 15 mins each, caught some art cars, saw the man and the temple and generally cruised the Esplanade.

We came home at around 2 am and it was freezing. I fell asleep in a camping chair my chair and then crawled into my sleeping bag.

It is time to recount Thursday before it slips my mind.

Thursday has been my favorite day thus far. After a lovely night’s sleep in my cozy sleeping back, I awoke and gave my dear feet and legs a good scrubbing. The sneakers that I’ve been wearing are my old Pumas – with holes in them. Even with two pairs of socks on, the dust found my feet. I really should have brought my Doc Martens. I’ve taken to wearing my Tevas with socks. Though my feet are somewhat exposed, my sneakers would trap dirt and rub it into my feet. With the Tevas, dirt can blow on and off of them at will. Not that it matters – I have embraced the playa, for it is everywhere. There is even quite a bit of dust in our tent from the storm on Wednesday. Vinay put forth a valiant effort cleaning much of it up, but it’s really not worth fighting it anymore.

Our Thursday activities: Erin found a Buddhist meditation session at noon in the Gothic Cathedral on the playa. I headed out there with Erin, Danny and Mary. It was very hot and sunny, but the session was relaxing. The leader encouraged us to coordinate our breathing with slow walking and to pay attention to the minute vibrations of our neurons firing. Afterward the meditation session, we walked to the Man and then caught an art car to a tea tent in the inner playa. The tent had low tables accompanied by sitting mats. They were serving chilled oolong in adorable clay cups without handles. Erin left Danny, Mary and myself to go attend an event – possibly the meeting of the OC Burners, I don’t quite recall.

Next, we advanced to the far side of camp, which we had never visited during the day: 6:30 and beyond. We found a Canadian camp, where there were people singing lewd but funny Canadian drinking songs. They had a Slip ‘n Slide that looked slightly dangerous. They also had an airbrush “tattoo” station. I received a very beautiful dragonfly airbrush on the back of my leg, Mary some sort of Asian character. From there, we walked back to Center Camp, pausing frequently to reapply sunblock.

Along the way to Center Camp, we stopped and took the census. The census contained demographic questions about the playa population, phrased in very delicate ways so as not to offend. Perhaps I shall snag a copy to take home. [ed. note – I never picked up one, but perhaps it’s available online somewhere, along with the results.] Our next stop was a coffee camp with fabulous espresso and iced coffee. We were given Skittles by passersby on a bike, and the combined sugar/caffeine buzz felt good.

In Center Camp, Mary and Danny relaxed while I explored and picked up an official Burning Man elephant sticker for my Nalgene. I painted the legendary HELP ISNOWHERE on the Picasso camp’s art wall. I was fascinated by the sheer quantity of city infrastructure in Center Camp: the library, the post office, a boutique and many others.

At some point, we left Center Camp and Danny split off. Mary and I made our way slowly back to camp. We stopped at the camp with the apartment building. They have erected a 7 story structure, complete with staircases, modernist furniture, a chandelier, a weight room and individual sleeping pods. The view of the playa from even three stories up was tremendous.

After we came down from the apartment, there was a sign for a pirate happy hour. Who could refuse a pirate happy hour? Still, Mary and I never quite made it as we encountered a beautiful East Indian-style tent. There was a bar set up in front and we stopped to speak with the proprietors. The man I spoke with was a research head in the immunohistography lab in Berkeley, a Columbia grad in his mid 30s. It is fascinating to peel away the layers of people from their playa personalities, costumes names and habits to get to their “real” lives. Mary and I chatted with the tent guys for a bit and then climbed on top of someone’s U haul to watch the sunset. We spoke with Camp Insex in front of their whimsical spider-shaped geodesic dome and then headed back to our tent. Mary had a giant glass of margarita to finish. Dinner was pleasant – the ability to heat water enhances our quality of life tremendously.

Instead of freezing like I did the night before, I simply put on more layers of clothing. I wore my pants, short hippy skirt, kerchief on my head, headlamp, camping shirt, woolrich flannel, Tevas and socks. Max commented favorably that I looked like one of those crazy Japanese kids who wear layers upon layers of clothing. No matter – I was going for fashion over function.

Mary, Danny and I stayed behind at camp to finish eating and dressing after the rest of the group left. They went to watch Max’s mockmentary, which was showing over at 9 o’clock – a bit far, considering I’d seen most of it being filmed – and to drop e. Mary, Danny and I had a lovely conversation about drugs as fake triggers of emotion and a book that Danny recommended called “The Botany of Desire,” which is apparently about pot, apples and potatoes. Why potatoes? Danny did not know. Eventually we left camp and advanced around the Esplanade to see the fiery dragon skeleton, Dance Dance Immolation, an organ spewing fire, the illuminated ping pong balls and to two of the big clubs on the edges of the Esplanade. At the dome club at 9 o’clock, Mary and I met the Wall – a guy doing a standup comedy routine with a wall attached to his back. Danny had to use the bathroom, and Mary and I expressed regret at leaving the wall. Instead, he decided to follow us. He acquired an audience, and we acquired a groupie (his real name was Sean). He did some of his standup and told us about his job at Johns Hopkins bio lab. He was also a former CTYer – back in 1986. I opted not to tell him that we attended over ten years later, for fear of making him feel old or uncomfortable conversing with us. My guess is that he thought we were at least a few years older than we actually were which seems to be a common misconception on the playa. As we are on the younger end of the spectrum, it is to be expected.

The Wall provided us with a few hours of entertainment. We got decently high on his materials in the middle of the playa, while he explained the many defense mechanisms of vaginas. He stayed with us until 3 am and then left us at one of the other clubs. Afterwards, I enjoyed dancing with Mary at the Opulent Temple in front of the DJ booth. At 4:30 am, I decided to leave. I needed to use the bathroom, Danny disliked the music, and I knew if I stayed up too late I would be dead the next day. Danny sat up with Yodel camp next door for a bit by their fire. I sat for a few minutes and then crawled into my sleeping bag on the cold, hard but refreshing ground.

Audrey

Read from Audrey's Burning Man Journal

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