We uh...we might have left a trace...

Too soon?

I'm ok, I'm back. Actually, I've been back since Tuesday but I need to recoup a little after--huh? You didn't notice that I'd been gone? Well, I was, and I was at Burning Man. Stuck there a couple of days but I guess--you didn't notice huh? Wow. Anyway, don't believe everything you read. There was no ebola outbreak, and I'm pretty sure nobody's had trench foot since the Battle of the Somme. There were however protestors who blocked the entrance saying that the event leaves a carbon footprint. 

Which, ok, it does. But then so do the ten thousand airplanes in sky, the six thousand container ships crossing the ocean, and the hundred million cars on the road at any given time. And not for nothing, but the event takes seventy thousand people off the road for a week and a half so again, yes, it's not super-green, but it's also not the biggest offender.

Also, I'm not sure causing a mile of cars to idle for
an hour was doing the planet any favors either.

Basically.

But the big story was the rain and it did cause a bit of a shit show, but let me explain. So the thing about the Black Rock Desert is that it's not sand but this sort of flour-like, alkali dust which, when combined with water, becomes mud. But not just regular mud, a sort of thick paste like cookie dough. It's difficult to walk through, and biking and cars are out of the question. It's rained at the Burn before, but never for so long. The smart thing to do is to simply stay put and wait for it to dry. It's usually takes about twenty-four hours, but guess what happened?

Here's our camp before the rain: note the dry, hard surface
and people enjoying both foot and bike travel upon it.

After the rain, it becomes an impassable muck leaving
campers no choice but to stay put and drink. A lot.

The degree to which people went nuts
seemed directly proportional to the number
of Coachellas they've attended.

Some attendees, and I'm not pointing fingers, but let's call them entitled festival babies, went absolutely feral at the first hint of rain. Lenin said every society is three meals away from chaos. These people barely waited a hour before loosing their ever loving minds. The directive from the event organizers was simple: shelter in place until the ground dried and was drivable again. But some did the exact opposite of that, hopping in their Sprinter vans and Teslas and whatever else the dumbs were driving while they tried--often unsuccessfully--to make it to the highway. This was a problem for a couple of reasons.

First, that's not how mud works, and a lot of them ended up either stuck or sliding uncontrollably and smashing into things. Our theme camp amassed a decent pile of parts sheered off these vehicles as they tried to take the intersection and ran afoul of the metal sign posts. Here's a picture of someone's rental van that nearly clipped our neighbor before becoming mired in the aforementioned cookie dough.

"MOOP" is Burning Man slang for junk abandoned on the ground. 
How the word found its way to being written in painter's tape is a mystery.
Also, the dildo hood ornament was probably not original to the rental van.

So this, but instead of prolonging the pandemic,
they just risked vehicular manslaughter charges.

The second problem is that driving on wet ground digs ruts; ruts that then harden when dried. These people who tried to book it out of there in shiny-yoga-pants and furry vest-clad disregard for not only their own safety and that of those around them then created a rougher ride for everyone else who did what they were supposed to. They are--and I can say this as someone who watched more than a few pedestrians have to leap out of the way of careening RV's driven by people who just can't follow directions--the worst. The actual worst.

But really, it was a great year. For most of the week, the weather was great, and when everything dried out they burned the man and everyone went home. And maybe the experience will keep the tourists away next year. If there is a next year. Burners pride themselves on "leaving no trace" but between the asshats abandoning their camping gear, and the potential for trash to end up buried in the mud, the Bureau of Land Management might be disinclined to permit the event next time. Fingers crossed.

Pictured: a trace.