Our Burning Man Story

We came, we built, we burned... and now we're back! It feels like barely a blink has gone by - or perhaps a year, full as it is with new experiences, the warmth of wonderful people, and gallons of energy drinks. We're tremendously grateful to this community, and excited to share a few photos and stories from our adventure...

Our week began as a study in determination. We had already test-loaded all the lumber for the garden into our Ford Ranger and trailer, but we needed to add in our regular camp supplies for the drive up. With everything piled up beside the truck for the first time, the image conjured up lessons from old nature documentaries, about how ants could carry leaves 50-times their size. There was no turning back though, so we went to work, packing and repacking over the next six hours. In the end, bungees and creative use of vertical space won out, and we had all our supplies suspended off the ground.

Driving turned out to be another unforeseen adventure. If we turned up any abrupt hills, the lumber, which stuck out six feet behind the back of the truck, would crash down on top of the trailer. We were constantly afraid that a traffic light would stop us on an incline, and we wouldn't be able to get the truck moving again. On the steepest parts of I-80, we had to shift into second gear. Luckily, the playa was as flat as ever. As we arrived triumphantly, three separate burners shouted out compliments about our packing.

The line to enter burning man was 7 hours long, but that was probably a blessing in disguise. We hadn't had any time to update the code since adding lights to our podium, so this was our chance to get things working again. We pulled the laptop out in the truck, along with a small mockup of the garden we made out of a few extra LEDs and some plywood. By the time we got in, we had a few working animations.

Early on Tuesday, we registered our Garden with the Artery, and headed out to build with our crew of four. The great people from Dustworks came out to drill postholes in the ground for us, while we moved our lumber to the site. We assembled each gate completely on the ground, then discovered that it was about a six-person job to lift it into the postholes. Fortunately, helpful people are rarely in short supply at burning man, and some wonderful folks stopped to lift with us, giving up several hours of their burn. We couldn't find a trencher to bury our cables, so we ended up digging little trenches with hammers. It was nearly 4am, but we finally had everything up and all the lights turned on. It was time to return to camp and sleep deeply.

After sleeping past noon - quite a feat under the desert sun - we made plans to head back to the garden and fix some animations. A lot of things that looked great on our little mockup were a visual mess on the larger lanterns. Just after the sun set, two of us set out for the Garden once again. As we arrived, a group of five or six people stood around the podium reading from the Book of Missed Connections. As we hung back in the shadows, the crowd stayed firmly planted, and we got more excited with every minute that ticked by. When a few people finally drifted off, we came in for a closer look and were instantly stupefied.

Page after page of the book had been filled since we left. There were short, funny notes, and entire pages of heartrending streams of consciousness. People wrote to missed connections, about missed connections, to other writers. Some were wistful, some nonsensical, some poetic. Though we put the book out for people to fill, we were never sure that anyone would care to write anything at all. Instead this collection of thoughts and emotions had flourished, outgrowing all the art we had toiled to construct. It was a humbling, and perfect result, and we spent an hour pouring over the book we had set in motion.

Finally, we sat down to fix up some animations. Coding next to the podium was a fun experience, as curious folks looked over to see what was happening. After we fixed a few things, it was time to replace the batteries. This was when we realized a mistake we made: while we spent hours carefully dust-proofing our Lightuino, we never bothered to put our battery pack in anything. We had to wiggle the new batteries around for several minutes before they finally made contact and turned the lights back on. It would eventually work each evening, but not without making us very nervous.

The Garden was a tremendous experience for all of us. We learned so much and feel tremendously grateful to this community for letting us pursue this project. We're especially humbled by everyone that donated to the project on Kickstarter: thank you for trusting us to follow through and make something worth contributing to. Hopefully, many of you managed to stop by the Garden while it was up. We know some of you didn't go to burning man, and we hope you'll get to see even greater incarnations of the Garden in future years. If you haven't already, take a look at Jesse's collection of photos, and hold on to your most imaginative, inclusive, and joyful spirit!

The Gardeners