Courtesy of Duane Peterson
Fluffy the Floating Cloud Bank at Burning Man 2023
Ignore all the doom-and-gloom reports coming out of Nevada's Black Rock Desert. Despite more than half an inch of rain that fell in 24 hours last week, turning the normally arid lake bed, or playa, into an impassible quicksand of gluey clay, 2023's
Burning Man festival was "fantastic."
That was the assessment of Duane Peterson, the SunCommon cofounder and 17-year veteran of Burning Man, an annual weeklong extravaganza of music, art, dance and whimsy.
Seven Days reached Peterson by cellphone on Monday just west of Cleveland, Ohio, during his 2,700-mile drive home to Waterbury Center.
Peterson, 67, was at the wheel of
Fluffy the Floating Cloud Bank, a 40-foot-long, wheelchair-accessible school bus. The rolling work of art was created two years ago by more than 100 volunteers, including local artists and engineers from Beta Technologies. It's outfitted with 70 cloud forms, a dance floor, a rooftop flamethrower, and a generator that powers its PA system and 14,000 LED lights that respond to music and sound.
Black Rock City, the ephemeral desert metropolis that forms each year for Burning Man, has a functioning post office, a hospital, a radio station and an airport. But in order to get a license from Burning Man's DMV — Department of Mutant Vehicles — to be one of the event's 800 art cars, Peterson had to affirm that Fluffy would provide transportation to fellow attendees, which this year numbered 73,000.
Last year, Peterson described his rig, with its wheelchair lift and braille descriptions on its handrails, as “accessible public transit masquerading as a floating cloud bank across the desert.”
Except for one minor mechanical problem, Fluffy performed flawlessly most of the week. But transit of any kind became impossible during this year's final weekend. Burning Man attendees, or Burners, who've come to expect normal desertlike conditions such as scorching heat, wind and dust, this year endured abnormal amounts of rainfall that created a small lake and impassible mud that took days to dry.
“It was extraordinary. Wherever you were, that’s where you were for a few days," Peterson said. "In our camp, called Duane's Whirld, we had a few strays who spent three days with us. We took them in and turned lemons to bubbly lemonade.”
Courtesy of Duane Peterson
Because Fluffy had to remain parked until the playa dried out, at night Burning Man attendees gathered there for late-night dance parties.
While much of the
national press focused on the disastrous conditions, including closed roads in and out, turned-away participants, mountains of abandoned trash, and one fatality, Peterson said he and the 44 others at Duane's Whirld were well prepared and never for a moment felt they were in danger. In fact, they "MacGyvered" shelter for those who were stranded. And with plenty of food, water, fuel and bedding on hand, Peterson estimated that they could have stayed an additional week, if necessary.
“Part of the whole shtick [of Burning Man] is the logistical adventure to create a whole pop-up city,” he explained. “We
had it. I was never afraid … We just turned it into a wonderful adventure.”