Monday, August 31, 2026
Not a lot of activity on this day. We slept in, and it felt great. The weather held; it was hot for Burning Man, but not terrible. The art car was misbehaving with its electrical, so we decided to keep it parked and do some scootering and then biking around the city and the playa.
We attended the opening fire ritual at sunset-ish (6 PM) on 06:00 and Esplanade. We hadn’t seen it before, but we’d seen the fire burning a particularly decorative metal holder in years past. The ceremony involved some dancing and drums, then a magnifying glass to get the fire going. That took a while. Whatever tinder they were using wasn’t working. It smoldered, but not much else. After an hour, some liquid help was applied and the fire started.
Many fire performers in the crowd then moved forward and lit their devices in the fire, and danced around it. Nice. Burning Man has a string tradition of fire performers, fire camps, and mutant vehicles with fire effects. In this case, any performer from the city could stop by and light up and dance. It was fun to watch. The crowd was restless through the lighting ceremony, but we were patient!
We watched for a bit then headed out into the playa. We didn’t take many photos.
