The Burning Man organization announced that they had passed their BLM inspection for 2023.
Many both inside and outside the Burning Man community were concerned that the rain and mud at the end of this years’ event might have made it impossible to pass. Many people and even entire camps appeared to flee the playa during the rain, apparently leaving a mess behind. “Common knowledge” was that cars and RVs and entire theme camps were abandoned in the mud. Many people had believed that the deep mud puddles contained hidden lots of hidden moop that would be impossible to discover.
Well, that turns out to be not what actually happened. “During the six weeks after the Burning Man event officially ended, and as they do every year, crews were still on site doing the final cleanup push leading to the BLM inspection. These teams picked up all kinds of Matter Out of Place (or MOOP): small debris, wood chips, tent stakes, and other items accidentally left behind from the 2023 event,” according to the organization.
The announcement this year came on November 29th. Many people wondered why it is so late, given that the actual BLM inspection already happened more than a month ago. In fact, this is not much later than normal. In 2019 the announcement was on November 19th, in 2018 it was on December 24th, in short, don’t read so much into why it took so long for the announcement. And don’t confuse the BLM inspection with the Moop Map, which can take forever (the Moop Map for 2022 did not arrive until March 2023).
Courtesy Duncan Rawlinson, duncan.co