Burning Man Is Even Better with Kids — and with Care

Even torrential rains couldn't ruin Catherine LaSota's experience of introducing her two small children to "the biggest playground in the world."

The author and her family at Illumination Village in Black Rock City.

I watched my son and daughter running in a loop around a giant structure of wood and steel, climbing a thirty-foot ladder, and sliding down a giant industrial plastic tube, where they landed on a pile of mattresses and pillows, over and over again. “Is this the biggest playground in the world?” my son asked. I told him that it was, and that this was an excellent description for Burning Man.

My husband and I hadn’t been to the Burn in eight years, since 2015, the year before our son was born. In 2023, we decided to return, this time with our two children, who are now 7 and 4.

When I went to the Burn in 2015, it was my first time and my husband’s fifth, and we both looked forward to returning to the playa – the dried-out lakebed where Black Rock City, home of the Burning Man event, is built and broken down every year. Our kids, who are used to the photos and ephemera in our home from Burning Mans past, were excited for the adventure. They had some embodied idea of what they were getting into, too – for my husband’s vampire circus-themed birthday party earlier this year, we brought fire eaters to our backyard to perform a show, and our kids sat in the front row. I had a feeling they could handle the Burn. Still, to make the experience as comfortable as possible for our children, we opted to forgo our tradition of tent camping and rent an RV, which we drove across the country with the kids from our home in New York City to the Nevada desert. In this way, we could get them used to their temporary home, which our daughter took to calling our “truck house.”

We spent four-and-a-half days driving past the outskirts of metropolises, through Wyoming plains, by the gleaming white salt flats of Utah, then organizing ourselves for a couple of days in Reno, the closest city to the Black Rock Desert. When we finally arrived on the playa, we were greeted with the customary heat and dust and a pleasant light wind. The kids received gifts of first-time Burner necklaces, and we adorned them with numbered wristbands registered with the Black Rock City Rangers, lest we get separated. We were ready for our family adventure at Burning Man, with a plan to follow our kids’ lead.

My husband and I hadn’t been to the Burn in eight years, since 2015, the year before our son was born. In 2023, we decided to return, this time with our two children, who are now 7 and 4.

Burning Man operates with ten essential principles, among them Leaving No Trace and Self-Reliance, meaning: you bring everything with you that you need to survive in the desert, and you take everything with you when you go. That includes all of your garbage, waste, dirty water, etc. We stocked our RV with 40 gallons of water, plenty of fresh and shelf-stable food, and treats and toys, too, as well as costumes for all weather, and gifts for our fellow Burners. Burning Man is more fun when you make play and interactivity as easy as possible.

Popular Burning Man art and sound car El Pulpo Magnifico.

In the first couple days of Burning Man, we dressed as pirates and robots, mermaids and caped crusaders in underwear and sneakers. Bicycles are the primary mode of transportation on the playa (you can’t go faster than five miles per hour, or you’ll kick up dust and worsen the inevitable white out windstorms), and we biked our kids out into the desert during daylight and under the full moon, to see fire and lights and stories-high art projects. Every 15 seconds, our delighted daughter would exclaim, “Look at that!” and bring smiles to us and everyone around us. It turns out that bringing your kids to Burning Man is pretty awesome; our son and daughter brought joy to everyone they encountered, and they became our VIP passes for cutting the line to board the most impressive art cars on the playa. Slow-moving art cars are “mutant vehicles,” trucks and buses transformed into fantastical transport, and they are the only method for getting around outside of biking and walking. I can tell you: there are not many better things than “sailing” on a replica of an 18th century frigate past a flaming metal Pegasus as an orange supermoon rises over the Black Rock Mountains in the distance, with gleeful children huddled by your side.

We were having a blast and eating good food from our stash of bacon and eggs and more, cooked on our propane stove. I was enjoying a daily morning coffee with brown sugar and oat milk creamer, and both kids had successfully taken to handling their business in the plentiful porta potties on a regular basis. In contrast, a woman came out of a porta potty a few days into the Burning Man week saying, “That was the worst experience of my life.” I thought she could probably use some more experiences.

I didn’t realize how powerful my thinking was, because – whew – if that Burner stuck around until the end of the week, she encountered the torrential rains and flooding that my family and I and over 70,000 fellow Burners dealt with at the end of our Burn.

***

My husband and I are experienced Burners, and we were prepared for harsh weather conditions, though the relatively heavy volume of rain that fell onto the playa this year was unusual and not entirely expected by us. Our new factor this year was just supposed to be that we were bringing our children to Burning Man for the first time. As a bonus, we received the most rain that any Burners have experienced at the event in years.

You can’t drive in the flooded playa. You can’t ride your bicycle. You can’t even walk. The mud cakes onto your shoes and becomes like cement. What’s more, you rip up the earth with every step, causing ruts when the land dries that last for years.

Everyone was urged to stay at their camp for the two-plus days that the ground was wet. Those who needed to get somewhere because of an emergency had to go barefoot or with plastic bags over their shoes or feet to prevent sticking to the ground. The official advice, as reported on Burning Man Information Radio (BMIR), the official station of Black Rock City, was to wear your socks over your shoes when walking around in the muck.

I was grateful for our RV when the rains hit on Friday, September 1, the day before the Man was scheduled to burn – the big, culminating Saturday night event that ultimately did not end up happening as scheduled, due to weather. With our RV, we had shelter from the wetness and cold, and we had stocked up on plenty of food and water before heading out into the desert, so we were doing fine there. But our RV was not plugged into a grid, and there is no black water removal service in Black Rock City. We already weren’t relying on our RV toilet for anything more than serving as a receptable for some of our gray water. Everyone I know at the Burn, even RV campers, use the banks of porta potties distributed throughout Burning Man all week long, because no one wants to live with the smell of shit rotting in their RV black water tank in the hot desert all week.

Left, the author's husband and kids biking across the playa; Right, the author's daughter enjoying artwork on the playa.

But with the raining and flooding, we lost our ability to get to the porta potties easily, and anyway, the flooded roads meant that the potties weren’t getting cleaned or serviced with any kind of regularity. Luckily, we had read the Burning Man survival guide, and listened to BMIR, and – on top of all that – my husband is kind of a prepper who knows about survivalist strategies. We’d made sure to bring a couple of large contractor buckets and plenty of big garbage bags out to the desert. Since Burning Man is a leave-no-trace event, and because we are not disrespectful and disgusting, we couldn’t just deal with the sudden lack of access to porta potties by pooping and pissing straight onto the playa. Instead: pee into containers you can seal and take with you for proper disposal somewhere along your journey home (or empty into the porta potties once access is restored). And: poop into your contractor bag-lined bucket, tie up the bag, and haul that out of the desert with you, too.

I wonder how that woman who had such a hard time with her porta potty experience early in the week fared later in the week. Did she attempt to use the un-serviced potties after the rain fell, when the human excrement was piling up so high it reached the seats?

***

I believe that part of the Burning Man experience is being confronted with challenges that most people don’t encounter in everyday life, and then learning how to meet those challenges with the resources, inner strength, and community support available to you. I also realize that a certain amount of privilege is required to go into such spaces willingly. Many people around the world live in harsher conditions for much longer than one to two weeks, and certainly not by choice. One of the many things that the playa provides is an opportunity for people who have gone through life with some level of blinders on to become critically aware of their own bodies and the bodies of others. That amazing artwork and genuine human connection with strangers takes place in the harsh physical conditions of Burning Man are part of what makes the experience of attending so moving and integrated into Burners’ lives. The best result is when Burners are inspired to bring the ten principles of the event back with them to the “default world,” as we call our everyday reality, with the aims of building a better world together. (A prime example of this is the longstanding Burners Without Borders initiative, which describes itself as “a grassroots, socially innovative, community leadership program whose goal is to unlock the creativity of local communities to solve problems.”)

Anyone who came out to the desert this year expecting just a party and drugs and dancing were in for a harsh wakeup call at the end of the week when the rains hit, and in many ways I am glad my children got to experience the wet weather conditions that forced reality onto everyone.

During a hot and dusty Burn week, it’s important to put healthy, protein-filled food into your body as much as possible. It’s important to drink water and eat salty, vinegary foods like pickles to counteract the alkaline desert climate’s effect on your body and skin. It’s important to wear sunscreen and to protect your eyes and ears.

When it rains and the ground turns to sticky, slimy mud, and you are faced with the possibility of being trapped in place for days longer than expected, it’s also important to ration your food and water supplies and take lots of deep breaths to maintain your sanity. It’s important to let go of the idea that you might return home with any of your possessions resembling anything you can call “clean.” Especially when you are confined to a 150 square foot RV with two young children.

From Left to Right: The author’s camp after the rain; the mud-encrusted shoe of the author’s son.

Honestly, the hardest part of the Burn for me was the unexpected playa flooding, but not because of anything life-threatening like running out of food or catching some disease from overflowing porta potties. The hardest part was not losing my shit more than once a day at my children as we waited for the sun to come out and dry the ground so we could get away from one another for a bit.

Our camp neighbors were all experienced Burners, and when we were able to trod over to one another’s camps during breaks in the rain, they always provided something to keep our spirits up. One camp even gave my children freshly-made vanilla ice cream cones on the third day of waiting things out in the wet muck. Burners find a way to make magic happen in the strangest of circumstances.

On the night when the Man was originally supposed to burn but didn’t, the camp across the street from us lit a giant bonfire with a wooden man structure in it, and our own camp handed out hot noodles and s’more fixings from our food pantry, while projecting movies onto our outdoor screen for anyone to enjoy.

The rains were a gift to us, in their way, giving us the chance to show our children how we could handle different challenges together, as well as the opportunity to practice keeping our own tempers in check while parenting in difficult conditions.

***

By Monday, the ground was dry enough that the exit gates were officially reopened, and over 40,000 Burning Man attendees who’d had enough (or who perhaps had pressing appointments back home) bee-lined to the Exodus line, waiting eight hours or more as their vehicles were slowly pulsed out onto the two-lane highway that begins Burners’ journeys back to their cities and towns around the world.

My family had endured two days of the muddy playa, mostly confined to our RV, and we weren’t about to jump ship that quickly. The Man was rescheduled to burn on Monday night, so we spent the day packing up our things and preparing to watch the spectacle that evening, with plans to head for the exit gates early on Tuesday morning after a few hours of sleep.

Catherine LaSota in front of the drying roads.

The Man burn was spectacular. Because so many people had already made their way out of Black Rock City, the crowds had thinned enough that my husband and I could sit right up front with our children to watch the stunning fireworks that sputtered off in all directions into the sky, before a giant fireball explosion set the Man ablaze. We then spent a bit of time dancing to some dub step blaring from an art car nearby, then headed to our packed-up RV for a bit of rest.

The rains were a gift to us, in their way, giving us the chance to show our children how we could handle different challenges together, as well as the opportunity to practice keeping our own tempers in check while parenting in difficult conditions.

In the Exodus line the next morning (which, for those of us who waited, lasted only three hours instead of eight), we saw evidence of what had happened when several people had tried to leave before the grounds had dried: off-roaded vehicles, stuck in the mud. It was disheartening seeing the abandoned cars and trailers and even entire RVs. That’s some giant MOOP, or “Matter Out of Place,” Burning Man parlance for stuff you bring onto the playa but don’t take out with you.

I have faith that Black Rock City’s Department of Public Works (DPW) — an entirely volunteer crew that sets up the infrastructure of the city and painstakingly works to restore the playa to pristine conditions after the last Burners have left — will work the magic that they do every year.  If they don’t, the Burning Man organization (rightfully) will not receive the rights from the Bureau of Land Management to hold the event again in future years. I’m grateful that so many other Burners return to the playa after the event ends, taking their responsibility to the land seriously and helping the DPW with their daunting task. If we lived closer than New York City, we’d join them, too. But the DPW shouldn’t have to deal with the level of negligence that way too many people clearly demonstrated by ignoring so many of the ten principles of the event, including Communal Effort and Civic Responsibility.

***

My family and I had a blast at Burning Man. My daughter’s favorite part was dressing up in costumes, and my son’s favorite part was watching the Man burn, and they have both expressed their desire to return in future years. I look forward to going back with my family to Black Rock City, and I hope, more than a little bit, that the attendees this year who bailed on the ten principles when the weather got tough decide not to return. I know I am not the first person to bemoan the changes to Burning Man and its attendees – many of whom now come in expecting to be spectators rather than participants – but I do not want to be part of a yearly event that causes undue harm to its environment or the people spending time there, and I do not think it needs to be that way.

My son, who started the second grade this Fall, will have quite a story for the “What did you do over your summer vacation?” prompt. I hope that the fun he had and the challenges we experienced together as a family stay with him, and that he can continue to see the whole world as a giant playground that is best when enjoyed responsibly and in a community of care.