When the Shelter Falls: Ritual Reimagined at Burning Man

I went to Burning Man this year carrying the intention of an ancestral grief ritual. It was going to be my contribution to our camp community. When I arrived on Sunday, August 24 after a 7 hour wait from "gravel to greeters" I had that in my heart, but the playa had its own lessons. The weather commanded the script with dust storms and sudden rain showers. Whiteouts swallowed the horizon, winds rearranged and uprooted entire camps, our own beautiful shade structure had a poll dislodge and break the back car window of one of our builders. Then the skies opened into rain that turned the desert floor into a heavy, sticky clay. Boots carried ridiculous amounts of mud. Art cars stopped and the entire event slowed to a crawl. The playa became a living altar of elements that refused to be ignored.

Camp Good Air (9:15 & I) assembles post Man Burn at the Apple Core. Photo Credit: Charles Lindsay

I never did get to perform the ritual I had imagined, but something else opened. Each day I cleaned and reorganized my Shiftpod inside and out. This simple act was more than tidying. It was a daily invocation of order, of beauty, of claiming space for myself and others within chaos. My beloved sculpted an owl mother goddess from the rain-soaked mud and I lit copal from Mexico at her breast. Smoke curled into the damp air as if to say the Ancestors found their way to us anyway.

There were other rituals too. Sitting with old friends and new ones, telling stories, singing songs, laughing until our sides hurt. Riding my bike at dawn, chasing art that appeared like mirages and dancing to DJs whose names I never caught. I searched for a sunrise Black Coffee set but what I found was something else, the kind of joy that slips through the cracks of seeking.

When I returned to Baja the rituals shifted form but not essence. The hurricane had carved deep scars into the land while I was gone. The road to my cistern washed away a way of taking water issues back home with me. The back gate of Baja Zen filled with sand and debris. Instead of rearranging the contents of my Shiftpod today I found myself on hands and knees digging out the gate, trying to coax order back into the flow of daily life. Repair has become a ritual, as essential as incense. My body ached in the same way it did on the playa, from tending, restoring, reshaping.

I still have workouts Monday and Friday with community and the sweetness of picking up produce from the regenerative farm. Even these familiar practices have been reframed by disruption. My evening beach walks will have to wait for a safer season, mean dogs escaped their pen and terrorize the shoreline, chasing people into the ocean. Even absence becomes part of ritual, a reminder of what cycles close and open.

Digging out the back gate at Baja Zen to get a long awaited water delivery.

I see now that ritual is not about ceremony performed at the perfect time. It is about attention. It is about how we show up when storms knock down the scaffolding of our plans. It is in the smoke rising from a mud goddess and in the quiet rhythm of a shovel meeting earth and mixing with sweat. It is in tending to space, whether in the middle of Black Rock City or in a Baja Zen garden.

Ritual is what remains when everything else is stripped away.