An interview with Jonathan Yudis
Photo Courtesy of Jonathan Yudis
Part of the Burning Man Series
Jonathan Yudis, Will’s father, is the co-founder and lead of Camp Mystic, and he has been attending Burning Man for over 20 years. While he typically prepares for sandstorms, wind, extreme heat, and cold, the one thing he wasn’t expecting was rain. Nevertheless, throughout the chaos, he remained unfazed.
“One of the things that has always made Burning Man unique and appealing is its emphasis on radical self-reliance. It’s about entering this adverse environment and dealing with the conditions. Traditionally, it’s a desert, so it’s extremely hot. And that’s challenging in and of itself. You’ve got to create shade,” he explains.
Beyond self-reliance, Yudis had a unique role at Burning Man as a Camp Leader. Attendees can choose to go on their own, bringing their supplies, or pay to join a “camp.” Camps generally have a theme and personality, focusing on spirituality, art, or other unique aspects. Usually, these camps provide food and resources for their members, but they also have their own requirements and principles.
Being part of a camp means contributing to the community in some way. For many, this involves attending “Build,” the week-long project before each Burning Man festival dedicated to building a temporary city for 80,000 people. In one week, a city blooms in what was a gigantic ancient lakebed, now an arid dusty moonscape, filled with art, lodgings, gathering spaces, toilets, kitchens, and every other amenity needed. Participating in Build could mean being an architect, electrician, sound designer, part of a camp’s cooking team, or a member of a cleaning crew.
Being a Camp Leader requires planning a year in advance to have all the necessary goods and resources. It takes serious coordination to ensure enough food and water for over two hundred people for a week. When the storm hit, Yudis had to adjust quickly.
Members of a camp or not, amid this year’s hurricane, the Burning Man community made sure that everyone had access to proper shelter. Due to the rain and mud, most people’s belongings were destroyed almost immediately. Because both camps and individuals had only planned for a week’s worth of food and water, they had to address this issue as well. There was no way to leave the desert, and most were stuck in Black Rock City for an extra week. Organization and problem-solving became a life-and-death matter.
“The first thing we were really focused on was health and safety,” he says. “We tried to ensure that people with shelters, like RVs and trailers, opened up their doors to all the people in camp who were in tents, as it was much worse if you were in a tent.”
“The second thing we did was make sure our kitchen could still function.” Luckily, Camp Mystic had brought extra supplies. “We never missed a meal, even in the middle of the rain, and in all of it, the people with food shifts showed up, and the kitchen was still functioning,” he says. Figuring out the food situation had instant benefits; Yudis observed that it “brought people’s spirits up.”
Sharing food was not limited to camps. Yudis remembers seeing an exhausted group of people trudging through the mud trying to make it back to their belongings. “The head of our kitchen had just made a fresh batch of french fries, which is like, are you kidding? That’s a huge treat in the desert. And she gave a basket of fries to these people,” he recalls.
Later in the day, Yuris would log onto social media and see a post about the kitchen from the group. “We were not in a good place. We were cold, tired, hungry, and wet. Just having somebody come out at that moment and give us a hot, fresh, spiced salty bowl of fries was the best. It gave us the energy to make it back to our camp.”
Yudis says that this spirit made the weather challenges much more manageable. Throughout the ordeal, Yudis and other organizers were focused on creating an upbeat environment. “That element is why I think that the rain was okay. Even though people were bummed out, there was still a lot of that, ‘okay, how can we make the best of this’?”
As we adapt to the unpredictability of climate change, maintaining a positive attitude is essential. Yudis carries hope for the future: “In an optimistic sense, I do think there are opportunities and potential technologies available to us that can rapidly heal what we’re currently experiencing.” Although Burning Man as a whole did not manage the situation perfectly, we can take inspiration from how the community came together to make the best of a potential catastrophe.
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