What happens in the Black Rock desert before the official opening of the Burning Man festival

The Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert of the US state of Nevada has been held annually since 1986, but this event was the first since the death of Burning Man founder Larry Harvey this spring. I first visited this festival in 2006 and have been to it many times since then. But this year I missed him.

I already wrote a lot about how Burning Man is going, and today I want to tell you about what happened in the Black Rock desert before its official opening. After all, preparing a holiday for so many people (in recent years - 70,000 people!) Is not so simple.

All the photos in this post are not mine, they were taken from burningman.org.

The first training teams arrive in the desert more than a month before the event. These are not very numerous teams, because at this moment in the future city of Black Rock City there is still no infrastructure.

The first task of builders is to mark where the city will be located. This is done a new way every year, since after the festival everyone is cleaned in accordance with the Leave No Trace principle.

These flags mark where the streets and avenues of the temporary city will go.

The guys work strictly according to the city plan, which changes a little every year. The organizers are trying to arrange the city so that the streets do not appear in the same place.

When the city is drawn, heavy construction equipment is pulled to the site of the festival. All the huge structures of the festival are installed with the help of such cranes.

Here is Maine preparing himself. It is collected on the spot, and then they are lifted by cranes and mounted on a pedestal.

Here he will not stand long, because during the festival he will have to burn out.

Another team is building this year's Temple. As a rule, this is the most elegant and unusual structure of the festival, the burning of the Temple on Sunday is the official end of the Burning Maine.

In addition to the Temple this year at the festival there was a special memorial in memory of Larry Harvey. Anyone who wanted to honor the artist’s contribution to the creation of such a holiday could come here.

In addition to official objects, construction teams of large art installations that require lengthy preparation come in advance. These projects, as a rule, are not associated with the organizers, although they are coordinated with them and receive various support (often in the form of “Can I borrow your crane?”) This year was a lot of interesting things.

For example, one group drove to the festival a disassembled carcass of the legendary two-story Boeing 747. For delivery of the aircraft, the highway had to be closed for several hours. Oh, sorry they are no longer made.