Its hard to believe that its been an entre year since this whole COVID fiasco started! Its been filled with more plot twists than an M. Night Shamalan flick but there are finally some vaccines out there and people are asking the 40 million dollar question:

"Will Burning Man happen this year?"

The short answer is that no one knows. Burning Man doesn't ever get official approval for their permit until early August so pretty much every year its unknown whether we will get our permit. This year is much the same, but with even greater uncertainty. Things could go really well with the vaccine roll out and we could be home free by the Burn. Or things could go horribly wrong and leave us without much immunity by then.

If the official event doesn't happen, will there be another renegade event? Will that event be safe to risk going? What about throwing our own small event?

I can say that I really want to go, and I want to be optimistic about the possibility but there are a lot of unknowns. If we as a camp do want to attend Burning Man 2021, we will need to start making plans before we have the official word the event is happening. Ticketing refunds nearly bankrupted Burning Man Project last year -- I very much doubt they will be able to honor them this year. I would plan on not getting a refund for a ticket if the event is cancelled. That makes it pretty hard for our core team to secure DGS (Directed Group Sale) tickets because most years we purchase all the DGS tickets we are allocated and then later distribute them to camp members. This left a lot of us holding the bag last year. This year we are reccomending that no one buys two tickets unless someone has given you money for the second ticket. This is going to have the effect of pushing up the date that people need to decide to go quite a bit.

If enough people are interested in going to a Renegade Burn, or creating our own small event -- we could have that in our pocket as a backup plan if the event is cancelled again. We are not quite sure what 'small event' might mean but basically something that is composed entirely of our close friends with people who are practicing all the scientifically recomended social distancing measures.

Leadership for 2021 has started (slowly) getting our asses together. We have had a few meetings so far and are excited about a 2021 event but unsure where most of us stand. So as a result, we are planning a small online gathering in a few weeks which we are hoping to see everyone who has any wisp of an interest in going to a 2021 event. We want to hear how you all generally feel about 2021 and what kind of appetite everyone has for this nonsense.

Here are three things we need your opinion on:

• Burning Man 2021
• Renegade Burning Man 2021
• Mycodelic Burn 2021

This date has not been set in stone, but shooting for a day / time on the weekend of Februrary 20th that would let everyone attend. If we don't see a big enough turnout -- Leadership will prob go back into our burrows and caves and save our time planning for convalescing. I wish you all well in this new year, may the odds be ever in our favor!