Twenty-four hours a day, you can find something interesting at Burning Man. But the body needs sleep, and for this you need a shelter. Do not – and I cannot stress this enough – do not bring a regular tent to the desert. You will not sleep. [I’m talking about the nylon or polyester, non-insulated, non-opaque variety of tent that most of us use when camping out under the trees, by the lake. Hereon-in, I’ll just called a “tent.”]
A quick note on when to sleep: Sunrise and Sunset are beautiful in the desert; you should see them as often as possible. The parties happen at night, they are loud and bright and mind-blowing; you want to see them. The ice sales only happen in limited hours during the day, usually 9am-6pm, and the food -whether made at your camp or gifted by other camps – comes out during the day; you need to eat and keep your supplies chilled. Which leaves many people wondering, “When can I sleep?” That’s easy: you should sleep between 4:30 and 5:45 am, and between 11:20 am and 1:05 pm. That’s how you’ll miss the least. [As a nationally ranked sleeper myself, training for the Olympics, I maintain practice even during the Burn - but I do ratchet down my standard 10.5 hours a night to a lean 8. The sacrifices I must make....] For those of you who can’t survive on three hours a night (or don’t have the necessary drugs) you can expand those hours, but the general time frame is the same: deep night and high noon.
During the night when all heat has radiated away you shiver in your furs, and you want one thing: a warm, draft-less place to sleep. Sadly, the thin fabric of a tent provides no insulation, leaving you only as warm as you can get with your sleeping bag and that dreadlocked trustafarian who followed you back to camp. No sleep for you. (and kick that fool out on the didgeridoo… have some pride)
During the day when the sun burns down and drains your energy, you want one thing: a cool, dark place to lie down and sleep off whatever chemicals and adventures kept you up the past twenty hours. Again, a tent in the desert provides none of those things; rather, it is what you might call a “hotbox.” The ‘roof’ lets through light, the ‘walls’ block any breeze, and you toss and turn, baking like a dirt-covered loaf of bread. Gritty, sweaty, dirt-bread. No sleep for you. (Also, very unpleasant.)
Now you’re exhausted and shivering or sweating. Let’s skip discussing the ever-present noise, the ever-present dust, and the not-so-ever-present-but-it-happens downpour against which a tent provides almost no protection. We’ll also skip the lack of privacy in a tent if you want to, let’s say, change your underwear. (Or put it on in the first place – I’m not judging here.) These all make your Burn a little more exhausting, a little less fun.
You need a shelter that blocks the sun during the day, maintains heat during the night, is waterproof, dust-proof, allows breezes when it’s stuffy but seals up tight when needed, and cuts off at least some of the noise. What you want is a yurt.
