photo by @thelastminute Archives

Here are my Burning Man 2021 Photos!
There are roughly a sextillion photos on this page. Some images might be mildly NSFW. Please be patient while this page loads. All of my Burning Man images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial license. If you share them please attribute the photographs to me by name and link to Duncan.co You cannot sell my photographs, make prints of them, or make money from them in any way whatsoever. That includes advertising on a website.

Wait HALP!
I make lots of mistakes with posting photos like this. The captions are often wrong and I would be really appreciate any comments (very bottom of page) or direct emails telling me about it. Email me to tell me how I’m doing it wrong or where the typos are etc. I will then update this post to reflect your comment or email. Just copy the link to the photo, take note of the photo number, or email the photo to me so I’ll know which photo you’re talking about.

More Useless Information:
The images below are in mostly reverse chronological order. This was first published September, 23 2021. These photos are also on Flickr and Photo.Duncan.co should you want a different viewing experience.

Music!!!
Here is a Burning Man 2021 playlist I made for you to enjoy while browsing these images. (open this in another window…) If this music is not to your taste, @muloka has compiled this collection from 2021.

Updates

Added these photos to Flickr September 24, 2021.
Added these photos to Photo.Duncan.co September 24, 2021.
Started a Reddit thread if you want to chime in. September 24, 2021.
Fixed the alignment issues with this post. It should look better now. September 29, 2021.
Fixed some captions. October 5th, 2021.

Thank You for letting me be a tiny little part of your community. – https://Duncan.co/Burning-Man-2021

Burning Meh 🤷🏼‍♂️

At a “real” burn I usually work myself to the bone to make images for the community but this year I simply couldn’t do that. I found the mental burden of being in a very hot unshaded tent (for the first time on playa) sapped my energy. I felt physically tired throughout this burn but I was glowing inside. This year was a good reminder of how spoiled I normally am in my RV. I think the main thing I missed (other than no fridge, no shower, no toilet, no shade, and no kitchen) was just knowing where everything was. The mental energy it took to remember where everything was in the tent really taxed my very smooth brain. These photos are the best I could do given the state of my body. Where was my RV you (don’t) ask?

Some RV Drama and a Helicopter Charter
The FOMO was real after 2020. So immediately after the 2020 burn I decided I was going in 2021 when I got vaccinated. After I was fully vaccinated I realized nothing was going to stop me from seeing my burn family this year. I needed to see my burn family. I usually burn in an RV. So I had to figure out a way to get myself and my RV across the border legally. The only problem was the US-Canada land border was closed to Canadians driving into the USA. I continue to find this laughably stupid. Canadians are welcome to fly into the United States but not drive into the United States. It makes perfect sense! We are allowed to go in a tube with hundreds of other randos (and interact with all the airport/airline staff) but you can’t drive in your own vehicle across the border. Smart! But I digress…

After a month or two of scratching my head I realized what the solution was. I would turn my RV into commercial freight (which is allowed at the land border, because you know society would collapse without trucks being able to move around) and I would turn myself into an airborne citizen. It took me quite a while to figure this out but there were companies offering just such a service to Canadian Snowbirds looking to get their vehicles across the border.

Here is how it worked. You drive to an airport near the border, they fly you on a chartered helicopter across the border and your vehicle is put on the back of a semi truck and is taken across as commercial freight. All of this is perfectly legal, just expensive.

I had found my workaround on the border issue now all I needed to do was make sure my RV was in good shape.

The vehicle had been sitting idle for sometime (pandemics are not conducive to RV life) and when I took it out of storage a month or two before the burn a check engine light came on. No problem, I took it to an “authorized” service dealer and paid like $3000 to get it all fixed. That was not fun but the vehicle was ready to be loaded with my gear and worked on for the long trip across the US. After a couple weeks of prepping the RV and getting everything ready I was ready to depart for the playa in 2021. I did several long checkout drives in the RV just to make sure all systems checked out, and they did. All systems were good to go so I headed off the night before my helicopter charter.

About five hours into the drive the same check engine light came back on. Turns out the guys at the “authorized” service dealer straight up lied. They didn’t fix the physical issue, they just erased the vehicle’s computer error code. Really classy Downtown Mercedes Benz Ottawa.

This check engine light on this particular vehicle will put the vehicle into a “limp mode” whereby the onboard computer will prevent the engine from going more than like 60KM/h so this was a major issue. (Which is why I had spent so much to get it “fixed” sigh)

I limped the vehicle into a nearby RV park and tried to figure it out. I was about 4000 KMs from the playa and it quickly dawned on me that the amount of time needed to drive home, shift all my equipment into another vehicle and return to the nearby airport/helicopter charted was very very tight. Like down to minutes.

I thought about all the other times in my life where I was completely exhausted but just decided to go for it anyway and realized I never regretted any of them. So I said fuck it, I’m going for it. You know, Buy the ticket, take the ride…

I limped the RV home (another 5 or 6 hours of slow driving) and made it home at around 2AM. Everything that was perfectly organized in the RV and ready for a burn was tossed into my jeep at high velocity. I had to redo all of the border paperwork for the vehicle and myself as well. Doing paperwork at 2AM when the wife and kids are sleeping and you are dripping with sweat from unloading an entire RV into a Jeep is super fun!

Here is the jeep about halfway loaded that night at around 3AM.

I got everything done and drove back to the airport/helicopter charter and made it with minutes to spare.

The helicopter charter folks were not pleased that I had to change vehicles at the last minute. But hey, my twitter handle is @thelastminute and I need to “to stay on brand!”

After that quick hop across the border aboard the helicopter I was reunited with my vehicle. The vehicle was absolutely full to the brim with gear from the RV. After some reorganizing I was ready to hit the road. I put myself on the truck driver schedule having not slept the night before. I would go to sleep early and wake extremely early to drive when nobody was on I80. I had lots of time on the road to figure out how I was going to live in a tent during a not burn where there isn’t even porta potties. The one time I don’t have my RV there is no infrastructure on playa at all… OMG…

4000KMs of driving later and I was on my way out to the playa with some wonderful friends. Then I got to hang out with even more great people! I barely made it. But I made it. I was quite beaten up but I was super grateful that I made it. Then I shot some pictures and had a wonderful time. I’m a very lucky human.

Thank You Dorothy 😘
Thank you Dorothy for continuing to allow me to come out to the burn. Thank you for holding it down so the community could have these images and I could refill my creative tank. I love you very much!

More Thank Yous
Thank you: Sarge, Mr. Wonderful, the ~~Adoraboys~~ Ragamuffins, Scott, Jeremy, and the rest of our camp. Thanks as well to Greg and the Altitude Lounge crew. Also special thanks to whomever made that Black Rock Dessert Camps site. Seeing that map really confirmed my decision to take part.

Sorry
Sorry to my Dad who will inevitably say there aren’t enough photos of me here.

Shout Outs
Shout out to the entire Burning Man community for doing it mostly right. All things considered, that went off very well for an organic self organized Renegade/Plan B/not Burning Man.

Thank you for including me!

Keep Burning Man turbo-weird and potentially fatal!

See you next year.

Next year was better?

🔥)'(🔥

Make your eyes bleed even more:

https://Duncan.co/Burning-Man-2020
https://Duncan.co/Burning-Man-2019
https://Duncan.co/Burning-Man-2018
https://Duncan.co/Burning-Man-2017
https://Duncan.co/Burning-Man-2016
https://Duncan.co/Burning-Man-2015
https://Duncan.co/Burning-Man-2014
https://Duncan.co/Burning-Man-2013
https://Duncan.co/Burning-Man-2012