Interview with Will Yudis
Photo Courtesy of Timothy Johnson
Part of the Burning Man Series
“Basically, like, you step in the mud with your boot and you’ll get like a circle of mud around your boot. So now you’ve got like 10 more pounds on each of your feet with that circle of mud. But every time you step, it gets exponentially bigger until you’re stepping with two bird feet, or huge mud clunkers.”
Will Yudis, a junior at San Diego State, says that of all the weather extremes he’s seen in the desert, a hurricane was the first. Yudis had been attending Burning Man for many years, commonly experiencing waves of extreme heat in the daytime and serious cold during the night. But this year was different.
Yudis remembers the calm before the storm.“The first day was great, great weather, great vibes. The second day was also amazing.”
Thursday was when things started going south.
“When we woke up, it started to drizzle a little bit.” People became more cautious with the use of cars and bikes, becoming aware that they could potentially get stuck in the mud. During the day, though, “it was still okay.”
Thursday night things took a turn for the worse, Yudis describes as the camp faced a “total downpour.” People who had set off to explore the festival got stuck quickly. Not only was the heavy rain dangerous on its own, but due to a unique chemical interaction in the sand, it became thick, deep, and cement-like. “It’s the mud, you can’t drive at all. You shouldn’t be driving,” Yurdis says. It became so bad that “people just had to abandon everything.” Walking a quarter of a mile became a treacherous journey. “It can theoretically get so bad that you would be moving at less than a mile an hour, stuck in the mud,” describes Yudis.
Even the most overpacked did not prepare for rain. Yudis’ father, who had been attending Burning Man for 20 years, said that he’d “never seen anything like this.” There had been rains before, few and far between but Hurricane Hilary was “even worse.” Another contributing factor to the plague of mud was the fact that the ground never really dried. And even if it did, it would only stay dry for at maximum a few hours. People hoped that sun and heat would eradicate the issue. This, unfortunately, proved not to be the case. “We wanted the sun,” says Yudis. “The problem was that when it was raining, it wasn’t hot.” Even when it wasn’t raining, it was cloudy and chilly. “It just continued to rain for hours and hours and hours. And that’s why the mud couldn’t dry up…,You were really stuck in your camp.”
However, Yudis describes his camp making the best of it. “No matter what happened, they always had food for breakfast and dinner. They still somehow managed to always do it, which was awesome.” Yudis describes having fun and making memories through it all while cooped up in a trailer.
Meanwhile, though, some people started to panic. Thousands piled into their cars trying everything they could to get out.
The Burning Man organizers decided to block the gates to stop people from leaving and potentially getting trapped in their cars. With this decision, masses started hiking miles out in the desert to get to the nearest bus station.
“I actually had to hike out to get back to school on time,” Yudis explains. He and his father packed everything they had, and began their hike. Yudis describes hours of hiking “in the mud and with our suitcases.” By then things started to dry up, and the weather temperature rose to over 90 degrees. “We jumped in someone’s RV, for like half a mile, just to get a ride, because of the heat,” he says. “We were dying.”
People waited in line for hours in the blazing sun. Fortunately, Yudis was able to make it out on time for the start of his school year.
Despite the unexpected turn of events, Yudis enjoyed his time at Burning Man. People got creative with methods to keep the mud off their boots. A common practice was wrapping their shoes with trash bags. As time went on, different methods to get through the mud began to evolve, including layering leggings and socks over their shoes, which looked strange but actually worked. Through it all, people found ways to be creative and flexible.
The mud at Burning Man is just another consequence of climate change. Hopefully, through this example we can get better at creating systems and technologies to navigate unexpected challenges that arise. Perhaps one day we’ll all become masters of mud.
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