It was desperation that led Michelle right into a BDSM tent at Burning Man. Not a determined want for a spanking. Far from being a masochist, Michelle simply needed aid from the warmth, and the BDSM tent had air-conditioning.

Burning Man 2022 was scorching. The infamous bacchanal held within the dusty, dry lake mattress of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert began at a excessive of 98 levels Fahrenheit on Monday, August 29. By the weekend it had gotten as much as 103, a record-setting temperature for a spot already inhospitable to life. 

That this featureless, skin-cracking-dry expanse of white mud isn’t simple residing has at all times been the purpose of internet hosting Burning Man there. But final 12 months’s circumstances led to a common sense of burnout and malaise, and lots of the 80,000 attendees requested the existential query of whether or not it was nonetheless value it to throw a celebration in a desert on a warming planet.

Tickets normally promote out inside seconds of occurring sale, and when the tickets to the 2023 occasion turn into accessible on April 12, that in all probability gained’t change. Instead, the occasion may slowly decay after hitting a cultural excessive level proper earlier than the pandemic.

Reno, Nevada, is the closest large metropolis, and it’s the quickest warming metropolis within the United States. Nevada presently averages 20 days a 12 months with “dangerous” warmth. By 2050, that’s projected to be 30 days. That doesn’t imply yearly from right here on out could have triple-digit days, nevertheless it does imply they’re more and more probably.

Michelle, 35, is an outdoorsy one that likes to camp out and hike. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, and counts loads of “Burners” amongst her mates and former roommates. “Self-sufficiency being one of the core principles, I was thinking this would be a really fun adventure for me,” she says, alluding to Burning Man’s foundational 10 Principles that competition devotees adhere to. (Michelle requested me to not use her final identify as a result of she worries that publicly figuring out as a Burner would adversely have an effect on her skilled life.)

Two mates obtained her a last-minute ticket and set her up with a 175-person sustainability-focused camp. There can be contemporary vegan meals, talks about sustainable residing, and a bio-toilet, and the camp would offer composting for different camps. She packed a duffle bag with light-weight garments, a giant hat, electrolytes, sunscreen, loads of water, two battery-powered followers, and a two-person tent. But these provides have been no match for the mud and the warmth. 

By 8:30 on the primary morning, her tent was an oven. She scrambled for a spot to cover from the warmth. The few misting cool-down stations listed within the official schedule have been all full of folks in search of respite. Meanwhile, mud storms swept over the playa, limiting visibility to a couple toes and coating everybody with alkaline mud. 

“I really felt like I was gonna die,” Michelle says. She knew her two mates had air-conditioning of their shelter, however they have been a 45-minute bike journey away. She lastly discovered their yurt and crawled inside. When they confirmed up an hour later, Michelle was having a breakdown. “This is too much. I think I need to go home,” she sobbed. She ended up staying, nonetheless, and on the finish of the week she endured the nauseating process of cleansing rotten meals out of her camp’s freezers and throwing it away—the camp’s previous mills had damaged down. 

It’s Hard to Be Green within the Dust

Full disclosure, I spent Burning Man 2022 in a gas-guzzling, air-conditioned RV. It was my sixth 12 months on the Burn, and I used to be having a disaster of conscience over my participation, which was exacerbated by sitting in a 12-hour site visitors jam to get out that was so large you would see it from house.