start to Reno playa-bound Camp Vermeer Ranger HQ I married someone rise and shine crash at Pepe's tower no sleep this night Rangers art cars people pyrotechnics SF-bound
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Burning Man 1998: Camp Vermeer
We drive through camp, heading to the south side, the quiet side of camp. We find a nice spot in Kid's Camp, a place for parents and their children. A few minutes later we spot an area around the corner, by folks who are also using a tan parachute to cover their central living space.
The Explorer gets parked, the parachute is lashed to the car's roof rack, a coatrack becomes the pole supporting the big top, and Ranger Lefty and I begin by positioning the main guy cables, attaching them onto the playa surface with the twelve-inch tent stakes we bought in the city.
Accompanying our first efforts with the parachute were cries coming from the north. After a half-minute we took heed of them, looked up, and saw a windstorm bearing down on us. We jumped into the truck, closing the doors, but not before a fine layer of playa dust covered the interior. The wind whipped up a complete white-out, blinding everyone and shaking camp structures to their foundations. Our next-door neighbors found their camp crashing down while they were holding on to the supports, their belongings being rolled away into South Third Avenue by the wind.
Moments later the weather passed. What little water fell was quickly absorbed or evaporated, and so we again worked on setting up camp.
Once the main guys are in place, and the parachute's form is stable, I affix the secondary guys. I use a slipknot so that I may tighten the guys easily, after the wind loosens them (as is the proper way of all things on a campsite).
Finally the 'chute is up. Next I pull Ranger Lefty's tarp from the back of the truck (after he pulls the bicycles off the rack and locks them to the side of the truck). I roll it out under the coatrack.
Now we have a surface on which we can put our supplies. We proceed to unload the rest of the truck. Then we turn to our electrical system.
A car battery is placed under the truck, an inverter to the battery, a power strip to the inverter, and a strand of white Christmas tree lights to the power strip.
The lights are strung around the edge of the parachute, the excess encircles the peak of shelter. We're done, and Ranger Lefty and I pose by Camp Vermeer.
Why Camp Vermeer? It might have been Real Art Camp (Classic art, as opposed to the contemporary, unreal art being erected all around us.) Ranger Lefty's favorite artist is Vermeer. He'd planned on bringing up a half-dozen framed prints of Vermeer, but all the reports of high wind discouraged him. Only one print made it, a print we hung from the parachute. This is what the camp looks like at night.
It's 2300, Friday 4 September 1998. I'm writing from the ground floor of Camp Vermeer, which we established just after noon today. Here's a photo of me typing these web pages on my Newton. Dust blows from time to time over it, but it's survived this Burning Man, as it did last year's. Geek toys.
I wanted to show you how Camp Vermeer looked at night; I hope you enjoyed the story of how we set things up.
Let's turn the clock back from the late evening, when we took these last photos, to the early afternoon, just after we finished setting out our things under the parachute.
Ranger Lefty (below) and I (above) unlock our bicycles and head out to survey Black Rock City.
On to Ranger HQ.
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