A Visit to Burning Man's Fly Ranch

I woke up one day in August and, to my surprise, discovered the Org had invited me to come visit Fly Ranch during the Burn. Obviously, it wasn't something I was going to pass up, and so on Tuesday afternoon of Burn week, myself and 13 other people headed out in a van from First Camp to Fly Ranch. 

What is Fly Ranch?

It's a 3800 acre property near the playa that hosted Burning Man in 1997 (just a few miles past the turn-off you make every year into Black Rock City), though only for that year, and back when the event was 10,000 people. You can read more about the event in 1997 here if you'd like. 

The Burning Man organization has tried to acquire it four times-ish over the past 20 years, finally succeeding this year, with $6.5m in funding completely gifted by wealthy Burners. 

The ranch has a diverse ecosystem, with one part of it dominated by swimmable hot springs that are pretty amazing. They're huge! The first thing we did on getting there was to strip off our dusty clothes and hop into the water, which is, I'd guess, between 99 and 101 degrees F. The bottom is delightfully muddy in a good way, and my god it was a pleasure to be there, soaking with other Burners. 

An aerial view of the hot springs part of Fly Ranch. Photo: Burning Man's site.

Why did they take us out to the ranch?

​Our group of 14 (out of about 200 they took out to the Ranch in total during the week) included the regional contact for Burning Japan, artists like Bryan Tedrick who has built things like the giant boar sculpture on the playa this year, a meta-regional coordinator for the Midwestern regionals, someone leading a theme camp whose name I can't recall, me, and so on. It was a pretty diverse group of people in terms of what we do at and around Burning Man. 

They explained that though they'd love to invite everyone, it's just not possible, which was clearly evident. There's simply no infrastructure there. There was one temporary shade structure, a couple porta-potties on a trailer, and a wooden pathway/viewing structure around the Fly Geyser. That's it. Plus, there are ecological concerns around the health of the pools and the surrounding grasslands. It's just not set up to deal with a flood of people.

While we were there, they just wanted us to get a feel for the surroundings, in order to get an idea of the kind of property it is, and start the creative juices flowing as regards what we might do with Fly Ranch.

We were also told a few things about their intentions for developing a plan for the ranch...

Bathing in one of the large hot spring pools. Photo: Me.

The shade structure we talked under. Photo: Me.

Why did Burning Man buy Fly Ranch?

Well, interestingly or recklessly (take your pick!), what was driven home to us while there, and what's been further emphasized in private conversations with people in the Org since then is that they do not have a plan for the land yet because they don't feel it'd be in keeping with Burning Man's mission to dictate a plan. Instead, they want to involve the community - us - in figuring out what should happen with it. 

There are, however, some concrete reasons to have purchased it. Two, in particular, stand out:

1. ​Burning Man uses something like 12 million gallons of water as an organization during the event, largely for dust abatement via watering the roads from the back of those trucks you've seen. (Unamusingly, that is about the same amount some jackass homeowner in Bel Air used in a year.) They've been purchasing the water from the previous Fly Ranch owner for some time, but now they've secured the rights to that water permanently. Interestingly, the water is actually potable (drinkable) but the trucks that are used to transport it aren't rated for that, turning the water unpotable.
   
   
2. Fly Ranch is adjacent to two notable pieces of property.
   
   First, it's adjacent to Black Rock Station, a 200 acre property that DPW has long used to store their equipment, and which has also been used by theme camps and art car groups for storage for the last few years.
   
   Second, it's adjacent to the Hualapai Flat, a large piece of property that includes the Hualapai Playa, a flat playa large enough to hold Black Rock City at its current size.​ One problem with that would be that it's a much smaller space than the Black Rock playa, so the same feeling of expansive everness wouldn't be there when you gaze out in deep playa.
   
   Burning Man claims that they have no plans to hold it there, but given their up-and-down relationship with the BLM (Bureau of Land Management, a federal agency), which controls the Black Rock playa, it's an interesting thought experiment. It's potentially leverage when negotiating with the BLM on fees (the Org pays several million per year to the BLM), and it's an escape route in case the relationship goes completely south and the BLM tells Burning Man to get out. That's purely my speculation though. The Org officially insists they have no plans to move Burning Man there, and I believe them. The Black Rock playa is more suited to the event anyway, due to its larger size. 
   
   
3. There are a huge range of possibilities beyond that, and that's where we, the community, get involved! 

Black Rock City superimposed at scale on the Hualapai playa. Across the mountains to the southeast is the Black Rock playa, where Burning Man has been held every year except one since 1990. Image: Simon Gold.

How Can You Help?

Think about all the questions and potential Fly Ranch brings up. We now have a 3800 acre permanent home very close to the Mecca of Burning Man - the Black Rock Desert. Literally, just down the road.

The BMORG plans to take this slowly, and is taking inspiration and advice from multiple groups, like Esalen and the Long Now Foundation, with a focus on long-term thinking, but ultimately, the answers will come from all of us - the Burning Man community.

I have my own thoughts, but I'd really love to hear what you think. The Org seems serious about doing this with heavy community involvement, so let's take put that to the test. I'll funnel your feedback to them and do another post talking about the feedback I got, so please, share what you think.

1. What can we do with Fly Ranch to make the experience that we go through during our time on the Black Rock playa better?
   
   
2. What can we do with it to make the experience of those burning at regionals around the world better?
   ​
3. Are there things we can do on that property to create new, interesting, and potentially more long-term sustainable experiences? Consider that Fly Ranch could, in the not-very-far-future, accommodate more Burners over the course of a year than go to Black Rock City for Burn week, for instance.

I don't ask these rhetorically. Please, think about them and leave feedback either in the comments below, or in the reddit thread about it: 

Below are some videos and photos I made of the landscape there, to give you a sense of what the portion of the property I visited feels like.

Those white dust clouds across the low mountains in the distance? Yep, that's Burning Man!