For Chicago residents who attended Burning Man, the muddy festival was a ‘magical, beautiful time’
Raven Smith wouldn’t have known that she was in the middle of the apocalypse. Long before news spread of an alleged disaster at Burning Man, she had lost phone service.
As the powerful rainstorm that soaked the desert gathering became an emergency captivating the nation, the Rogers Park resident looked outside her camp shelter. There, she saw kids playing in the mud.
“They were sliding in it, like a Slip ‘N Slide. They were throwing it at each other. There were some trying to build sand castles,” she said. “There was just glee.”
The quirky weeklong gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert — notorious for an imaginative array of revelry — sparked viral fears amid circulating images showing knee-deep mud and stuck cars. Dire reports warned of unserviceable and overflowing toilets and looming trench foot.
It was dirty, the Chicago attendees the Tribune spoke with admitted. And in spite of the mess, or possibly because of it, they loved their time.
The doom-tinged reports about the festival, held from Aug. 27 through Sept. 4, were overblown, attendees said. While the mud posed challenges, they argued it made the festival more fun by testing Burning Man’s radical vision of a self-reliant, caring community.
“People banded together and tried to help each other,” said Jay Woldenberg, a Rogers Park resident who works as a consultant.
A core element of the festival is a sharing economy. Attendees generally bring goods and services they plan to give away, expecting their own needs will be met by what they receive.
Camp groups might bake hundreds of chocolate chip cookies, Woldenberg, 57, said. Others might stage laser-filled music performances. His camp hosted an Iranian tea house filled with food and drinks.
On Wednesday night, before the storm, the tea house fed an authentic Iranian dinner to over 1,200 people.
“Everyone wants you to have a great time,” said Woldenberg, who has attended the last six Burning Man gatherings. “They want to feed you, or tell you a story, or give you an experience.”
Attendees, called “burners,” typically bounce around amid the unusual and generous offerings. But as downpours melted the hard desert ground to slush, many camps and wanderers weren’t active.
The shutdowns led the “social influencer” attendees, like celebrities and wealthy tourists, to leave, Woldenberg said.
“The rain ruined your ability to go out there and do things,” he conceded. But his camp managed to find a bright spot in the murk, he added.
Sure, they had to bail out water. They also had to designate an area to “do number one” so the port-a-potties wouldn’t overflow, Woldenberg said. The fine Iranian rugs they brought were eventually buried under mud too.
But they kept inviting people in for food and shelter. There were enough provisions and ample protection from the elements, he said. The campers played music and danced. They relaxed and talked.
“It was a magical, beautiful time where everyone came together and made the best of it,” Woldenberg said.
The ground’s mineral composition made the “playa” where the gathering takes place turn into a “muddy, mucky gunk that stuck to everything,” Woldenberg said.
Attendee Mike Mueller said the burners took the mud “in stride,” even if it weighed those strides down.
“We hardly even noticed the mud,” he said. “Except that when you’re walking around, your feet get heavier and heavier.”
Mueller, 57, who grew up in Chicago’s suburbs and now lives in Denver, worked for Burning Man’s composting operations, part of the gathering’s “leave no trace” policy. He found just a handful of trash, mostly paper scraps, in a 5-mile search around the campgrounds after the festival ended, he said.
The festival’s opposition to litter, one of its “10 principles,” is a big reason he enjoys it. At most normal public gatherings, he sees people leave trash everywhere.
He sees Burning Man as a place working to improve itself. At home, he might not know his neighbors or feel like he can talk to strangers. But people are open and caring at the festival, he said.
“You come out here and you can be a different person if you want,” Mueller said. “It’s a blank slate.”
People figured out how to adapt when the rain came, he said. Festival organizers put out a “survival guide” advising attendees to stay near their campgrounds, and everyone learned from the people around them, he said.
He opted for muck boots and laughed off the myriad social media posts about the gathering’s situation, which he said became “the big joke.” The people who left were the ones who came “just for a bucket list or for an Instagram photo,” he said.
“It was like taking a trip back in time,” Mueller said. “When the event was smaller and more intimate.”
One viral falsehood spread across X, formerly known as Twitter, claimed the Ebola virus was spreading at the festival. Portage Park resident Jemma Rifai said the posts, which she believed were driven by a desire for “clicks and likes,” nudged many friends to message her with concerns.
But Rifai’s parents were less worried.
“Sounds like Woodstock. Have fun!” she recalled them telling her.
By the time the rain hit, some of the magic from earlier in the week had faded. On one pre-storm night, Rifai and her husband found a man grilling fancy steak cuts next to an “art car” designed to look like a burning house. Another night, they stumbled upon a pizza restaurant.
But even as many of the quirky festival’s hard-to-imagine offerings closed, the struggle to learn how to wrap shoes in trash bags and make fun amid the change of plans offered a lesson.
“I can do hard things,” Rifai, 33, said.
The flight attendant said she saw people don Speedos to play in the mud. She got caught with her friend’s bike almost 2 miles from camp when the rain hit. As she pushed it through the slop, she saw people continue to celebrate the festival.
“People come together, and help each other out, and find silver linings in everything. We’re prepared. We care about each other. We will find some way to have fun,” she added. “You don’t get the burn you want. You get the burn you need.”
Smith, who appeared recently on the survival television show “Naked and Afraid,” likened the festival she has attended eight times to New Year’s Eve. Alongside the parties, there are temples and churches, and even Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, she said.
“It’s a recalibration of everything you want to do,” she said.
One camp she attended before the storm was stocked with giant white pillows and a DJ for a pillow-fight, dance-party hybrid.
But despite the playfulness, the festival was particularly mature, Smith said. It was marked by conversations about consent, eye contact and openhearted conversations with strangers, she said.
The storm ultimately led to “less tourists, more participants” as old agendas faded, Smith said.
Smith, who had made no plans to return to Reno post-fest, worried about how she’d get out of the desert. When she asked around and quickly secured a spot in the RV of someone she had been sleeping near, she learned another lesson, she said: asking for what you want helps you get it.
When it came time to leave, the vehicle she rode in waited in line to take the one road back to civilization. The “Exodus” dragged on for some six hours, as the slow process does most years, she said.
As cars trudged along below 5 mph, a last chance to celebrate emerged. Smith got out to dance to the music blasting from a powerful sound system set up on the flatbed in front of her car. She thanked the DJ. She was supposed to play during the festival but her show got rained out, she said.
“Would you like to play now?” the DJ asked.
She took control of the table and dished out a mix of dance music. Then she played Michael Jackson and Diana Ross’s “Ease on Down the Road.” She turned around and saw 150 people taking their last dance on the drying road.
