(Poor Parentheticals, abandoned for so long. What little public updating I do these days seems to only take place on Facebook. But Facebook is mostly a short-form place, and I have a LOT to say about this year’s trip to Burning Man, so I’ll put it here.)
Burning Man! It has come and gone, and though the lead up to the week in Black Rock City felt like it went on and on and consumed much of my available time and energy for July and August (see below), the week itself seemed to come and go in a flash. I’ve been back from the desert for nearly three weeks now, and am just now finally able to sit down and start writing up the experiences I had there. Why the delay? Well, it’s partly due to the traditional re-entry fatigue and accompanying post-playa blues, and partly due to the surging return of all the postponed life distractions that have pulled at me me since I’ve been back, but it is also partly due to my own need for some processing time. I’m still in the midst of that processing, I think, but I’m finally able to start setting down at least a few things now. For those readers who are impatient with the full, overly detailed and admittedly solipsistic story, please feel free to just skim and look at the pictures (or you can click through to the full set on Flickr, here), or you can skip to the end to see my summary of this year’s takeaways. And if you’re unfamiliar with Burning Man in general, you might want to go look at my posts from my first year in 2011, in which I explain some things (or you could just go look at the official Burning Man website).
Before I jump into the details and stories of this year’s burn, however, I feel like a prologue (oh yeah, I’m gonna go there: into the dreaded prologue!) is necessary. Because in many ways, this year’s burn and its accompanying epiphanies and lessons started well before the actual week in the desert. (If prologues give you the heebie jeebies, though, or this particular part of the story doesn’t interest you and you just want to skip to the stories of fun times in the dust, click here to go to Part 1.) You see, this year, Josh and I got involved (and then we got heavily involved, and then we became project leaders) in co-creating a significant project for Sacred Spaces Village (the camp I’ve been with for the previous two years at Burning Man): the showers. Yes, the showers, or as it then became called, the “shower experience”, which ultimately morphed into a giant project called the “Temple of Renewal”.
Let me set up some context here. Last year at Sacred Spaces Village (SSV), there had been two showers, contained within the same small wooden private enclosure as our two (unfortunately often stinky and over-full) porta-potties. The showers last year were cobbled together from raw lumber and canvas curtains on top of a couple of shower pans, with hooks and ropes above to hang solar shower bags (which we all were supposed to bring) and a greywater bucket underneath each one to catch the run off, which campers then had to take out and bring over to empty into the camp’s larger greywater cube after their showers. It was adequate but very utilitarian and got pretty grubby and gross over the course of the week. Josh and I and some other Yaboogie pod-mates of ours had been part of a conversation about the showers last year which started with us complaining and wanting to make suggestions about how the showers could be improved, and ended with one of the camp leaders saying to us “great, so why don’t you be in charge of the showers next year?” And (perhaps foolishly or over-enthusiastically, in hindsight) we’d agreed.
We conveniently forgot about having agreed to this project until around May, but once we were reminded, we started to organize and recruit team members and started having conference calls to figure out our vision for the project. Our little team (which was mostly me, Josh and my burner buddy Eileen) started out with the assumption that we would be responsible for figuring out what the improved shower experience would be, including what pieces should be built/acquired and how the whole thing should be decorated, and for then giving directions to the build team, who would be able to physically build what we had envisioned. We also assumed that the camp’s build lead, who was part of our team, would be providing direction on how to turn our vision of the experience into an actual buildable plan, since none of us had any experience with construction or plumbing. We expected to put in a good amount of time in helping to get specific about the experience and the particular pieces of the project, and we were prepared to help build and decorate specific pieces ahead of time, but we assumed that since the showers themselves and the structure which enclosed them would all be actually assembled by the build team on playa, they’d tell us what was possible and what was not and what we’d need in order to do the construction.
Do you know that saying about assumptions? That they make an ASS out of U and ME? Yeah. We were wrong.
Our small team worked on the vision of what the shower experience was going to be throughout May and June. And what a glorious vision we came up with! True to the spirit of a camp called “Sacred Spaces”, we wanted the shower experience to be not only practical, but sacred. So we asked ourselves, what would the showers look like if they were treated like a sacred space, like a temple? Thus the “Temple of Renewal” was born. Our goal was “to provide an opportunity for loving self-care in a setting that is beautiful, refreshing and mindful.” We went through several incarnations, but finally settled on this vision for the Temple of Renewal: we started with a 30’ dome (which would later be downgraded to 24’) in the center of which would be our shower enclosure, a 10' tall, 8' wide wooden building that enclosed 4 shower stalls laid out in a 2x2 square. At the entrance to the dome we would have a transitional “vestibule” space with cubbies and benches so visitors could remove and leave their shoes and other dusty gear and do some “pre-cleansing” with vinegar wipes as needed to ready themselves for their sacred renewal experience. Once through the vestibule, visitors would encounter the front of the shower enclosure, which would be decorated with art and an altar. Visitors would have the opportunity to stop at the altar and set an intention for what they would like to wash away and the way(s) in which they wanted to be renewed during their visit. On the altar would be a jar full of tiny cards with blessings/questions/intention suggestions--visitors could pick one to use as a focus during their visit. Then visitors would move around either side of the altar in order to access the shower stalls via stairs on either side of the enclosure (the showers had to be raised on a platform because of the need for gravity’s assistance in letting greywater drain out and away). The sides of the dome would have benches to sit on while waiting for a shower to become available or while just enjoying the space. Visitors would bring their own shower bags and hook them to a rope/pulley system that hung above each shower, and there would be a caddy in each shower for toiletries and hooks outside for clothes and towels. Greywater would drain away through the magic of gravity into a communal greywater barrel, which a sump pump would then automatically pump out into our camp’s greywater cube. Inspirational signs would hang in and around the shower area, and rope lighting hanging around the dome and floor would keep the space lit at night. The back of the enclosure would be our "vanity" area for dressing and primping. On the wall we would have two full-length mirrors, plus a few small shelves, and benches to sit on while getting dressed or putting on lotion or makeup. A variety of lovely lotions and potions (body/face lotion, essential oil sprays and perfumes, etc) would be stocked on the shelves to be used by all visitors whether or not they have showered--it would be a great space for a quick refresh or for putting on makeup and checking out one’s awesome outfit in the mirror before going out for the evening.
Sounds pretty awesome, right? We thought so. I was really excited about being in charge of décor for this project...I made a concept board on Pinterest with the dual themes of sea-glass and Atlantis as inspiration, and put together a whole list of décor projects from small (create shower signs) to large (make and decorate furniture). I personally took on a couple big art pieces: the 8’x8’ altar hanging, and a “seaglass guardian” sculpture made from recycled bottles that would stand in the vestibule. It was going to be beautiful, it was going to be sacred, it was going to be something really special, just for our fellow villagers.
Aaaand then sometime in June we realized that our assumptions of who was going to actually physically create this beautiful vision of ours were not correct. (Remember that thing about assumptions making an ass out of u and me?) Sure, the build team would assemble whatever we came up with once it got to the playa, but it became clear that our build lead wasn’t going to come up with any sort of architectural plan ahead of time, nor was anyone else going to figure out the building materials list so that all the ingredients (lumber, bolts, paint, etc) could be purchased ahead of time. We realized right around the beginning of July that if anyone was going to make this vision actually happen, it would have to be us. No one else was giving us guidance or direction, and no one else was going to do the ahead-of-time work necessary to actually make the showers themselves. We would have to “go big or go home”.
So Josh, renaissance maker man that he is at heart, jumped in to the breach and created detailed architectural plans for a shower structure that would be safe, re-usable, and easy to assemble on playa from pre-built modular pieces. We ran the plans by our team and one of our camp leads and got general approval on them. Then Josh figured out how much and what kind of lumber we would need to make it all happen, called up the lumber company and ordered it all delivered to our house. Then, after that pile of lumber arrived in our driveway, he began to measure and cut and build. And I began to paint, and to manage and help create all the other décor projects that we’d decided to include. Eileen took on the creation and collection of our altar décor. Some of our Yaboogie pod peeps and a few other SSV friends came by on weekends to help with building and painting. Even our down-the-street neighbors (whom we now know are veteran burners) came by one day to help out! (Overall, one of the big benefits of working on this project was that it allowed us to meet some amazing people, and get to know each other better in that special way that only comes through working hard together on a big vision.) We were pressed for time, stressed about costs and feeling dangerously ignorant about building, but we persevered. Josh and I hunkered down and blew off most everything else in our lives and worked our butts off for about a month, right up until that day in mid-August, about a week and a half before the burn started, when the camp’s truck came and we had to load all the pieces of our Temple of Renewal onto it. (And what a relief that day was!)
I won’t lie, it was a tough project to do, mostly because of the knowledge and experience deficit we started with and the time crunch we found ourselves in. We were noodged by camp leaders, but not really supported in any practical way beyond scattershot advice, signal bumping on calls for help at work parties, and the occasional “you guys are doing a great job” pat on the back. All that was good, but what we really needed was someone regularly checking in on us and helping us to coordinate our efforts with the rest of what was going to be built at camp, someone knowledgeable and experienced who could guide us as to best practices and be clear with us about what our resources and budget were and help us work with what we had access to. Once we realized that we weren’t going to get that kind of support or guidance, and accepted that we were going to have to do everything ourselves (and that whatever we did would be good enough), we were able to harness our own “get sh*t done” superpowers and do what it took to finish the project. And finish it we did, not perfectly, not completely, but in a way that was remarkably close to our original vision and which turned out to be pretty damn successful all the way around.
This project taught me many lessons, just as the experience of Burning Man itself tends to do. I learned a lot about organizational dynamics, and about how to navigate (or not) a chaotic system. I learned that existing relationships are the most reliable source of help (and how important it is to build/strengthen relationships beforehand so that when you need to call on people for help, they’ll come). But I also learned that when you are open to it, sometimes help comes from unexpected places, from outside those carefully cultivated previous relationships, and that kind of help is an amazing gift that can then hopefully be turned into a mutually satisfying relationship (which might even lead to more help in the future!) I learned how to lead (and cheerlead) a project, and an ever-shifting team (pro tip: humor and enthusiasm get you pretty far). I got better at telling the difference between people with a can-do, get-sh*t-done ethic and those with good intentions, and I got to practice how to properly value/appreciate/distribute the former and how to encourage the conversion of the latter into active participants. I learned about how to pace work, and when to push and when not to. I certainly discovered more about my own capacities (and Josh’s)...and I was pleased with what I found.
After all the pieces of the shower were loaded on the truck (the altar décor and other fragile decorations were going up separately), we had about four days to get our own supplies and gear ready to pack up to go with Josh—he was going up a week early to do build for the whole SSV camp (I would be driving up separately with my BFF Anjanette and arriving on the Monday when the event started). So we scurried around and finished making our hexayurt and bought supplies and fixed up bikes and pulled out camping gear and costumes. Then on Monday of the week before the burn we loaded 99% of all that into our minivan and sent Josh on his way. He spent the next week dealing with crazy windy thunderstorms and a difficult build, but that’s his story to tell. I was worried about him but he was able to text me every once in awhile so I knew he was ok and hanging in there. Meanwhile, I spent the next week finishing up art projects (the altar hanging for the Temple of Renewal, 300+ freak flags for my Fly Your Freak Flag High workshops, a Temple Guardian staff, and a costume piece made from leftover bits of the altar hanging), packing the rest of my own gear and clothing, and dealing with the first week of school for our kids.
Finally, the day of departure came...and I’ll start that story in Part 1.