Sep 30, 2026 · 27 min · 11 segments
Listen to more of The Big Story here: http://swap.fm/l/wi-bigstorypod-feeddrop Dispatches from the New American Holiday: Writer Bruce Sterling takes the kids to the Temporary Autonomous Zone…
Grizzled, portly, Nevadan local growls, If you have to ask, you don't belong there.
The gas station was packed with mobile homes and junker slacker mobiles.
The guy relented and gave us directions.
Seems like a multiple pierced and tattooed lovely in a clingy peach taffeta costume had melted his heart.
Drove 16 miles, then drove another 12 miles across the bottom of a very dead lake.
Driving across the playa is like space travel.
You point the front of the vehicle into emptiness and launch.
Gaseous trails of flying white dust spurt up like jet exhaust.
Cars and trucks leave huge wakes on the horizon, like white prairie fires.
If the wind kicks up, the world becomes a twilight zone of milky haze.
Driving fast in a white-out dust fog is an excellent way to get killed.
We're in a 22-foot Ford recreational vehicle in which I've brought the family to Burning Man.
Nancy Sterling, wife, mom, Amy Sterling, nine years, and the littlest desert fox, Laura of Arabia, a hardened travel veteran at four months.
We've never lived in an RV before.
It's a mutant cross between an aircraft and a small chunk of suburbia.
It's brand new, but it shudders, moans, vibrates, rattles, squeaks, and emits foul generator exhaust.
Reached the camp, found a place to park, got out to walk around.
Maybe 500 vehicles here already.
People are setting up tents, parachutes, awnings, tiki torches, tribal flags.
The parched Nevada mountains of the Black Rock Desert rise on three sides.
Weary treeless hills full of sullen majesty.
Grizzled, portly, Nevadan local growls, If you have to ask, you don't belong there.
The gas station was packed with mobile homes and junker slacker mobiles.
The guy relented and gave us directions.
Seems like a multiple pierced and tattooed lovely in a clingy peach taffeta costume had melted his heart.
Drove 16 miles, then drove another 12 miles across the bottom of a very dead lake.
Driving across the playa is like space travel.
You point the front of the vehicle into emptiness and launch.
Gaseous trails of flying white dust spurt up like jet exhaust.
Cars and trucks leave huge wakes on the horizon, like white prairie fires.
If the wind kicks up, the world becomes a twilight zone of milky haze.
Driving fast in a white-out dust fog is an excellent way to get killed.
We're in a 22-foot Ford recreational vehicle in which I've brought the family to Burning Man.
Nancy Sterling, wife, mom, Amy Sterling, nine years, and the littlest desert fox, Laura of Arabia, a hardened travel veteran at four months.
We've never lived in an RV before.
It's a mutant cross between an aircraft and a small chunk of suburbia.
It's brand new, but it shudders, moans, vibrates, rattles, squeaks, and emits foul generator exhaust.
Reached the camp, found a place to park, got out to walk around.
Maybe 500 vehicles here already.
People are setting up tents, parachutes, awnings, tiki torches, tribal flags.
The parched Nevada mountains of the Black Rock Desert rise on three sides.
Weary treeless hills full of sullen majesty.
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