start to Reno playa-bound Camp Vermeer Ranger HQ I married someone rise and shine crash at Pepe's tower no sleep this night Rangers art cars people pyrotechnics SF-bound
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Burning Man 1998: Friday Afternoon
The first thing we do is head over to the Black Rock Rangers headquarters. (Below you see the meeting area behind the extra-long mobile home that's Ranger HQ this year.) For each of the three years I've been to Burning Man I've volunteered to be a Ranger. Modelled after the Texas Rangers, a small group who provided law and order to the wild frontier, the Black Rock Rangers strive to protect and serve the community in a non-confrontational manner.
Rangering was for me a natural fit, what with my familiarity with ham radio communications (and radio dispatch), with crisis management, with the use of the Incident Command System to manage resources, with wilderness trekking, survival, and search and rescue, and with emergency medicine.
I sign in and receive a radio. Ranger Lefty signs up as an Alpha Ranger, a person who wants to volunteer but hasn't been to a Ranger Orientation Meeting, a ROM. We start patrolling the Esplanade.
The first thing we see on the Esplanade is The One Tree. Flames shoot from the pipe ends from dusk to dawn. Water trickles down from the branches around the clock, drawing a steady stream (pun unintended) of bathers.
In the background you can see the lamp posts that lead to the Man. Here's what the Man looks like from a closer vantage point. The wooden spheres are part of the Man. They'll be burned on Sunday, just before he will.
Next I perform a marriage ceremony at the House of Doors.
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