This is it, everybody: the moment you’ve been waiting for. Did your camp Leave No Trace? We’re about to find out, in the thrilling first installment of MOOP Map Live 2012!

The MOOP line stretches from Iris to Lilac, covering three city blocks. Photo by Vertumnus. Click for full size!

Day One of Playa Restoration was a day of legend, the perfect day. Maybe, just maybe the Best Day Ever.

A lot of that is thanks to YOU, all you MOOP maniacs who cleaned up after yourselves and your neighbors too.

Some of it is thanks to the weather: A clear, 90° day with a light breeze. Warm, but not deathly hot — and nary a dust storm to be seen.

Spirits were high on the MOOP line. Photo by Vertumnus. Click to enlarge!

For the rest, we can thank the all-star Playa Restoration team, who covered a record 96 blocks in a single day, beating the previous record by 30! That’s unheard of, folks. Let’s give ‘em a big round of applause!

Yes, on their very first day this team has proved their mettle — but they couldn’t have done it without the help of the Burning Man community. Remember, the MOOP Map isn’t about us: It’s about YOU. This is YOUR scorecard, Black Rock City, and without further ado, here are your first day’s results:

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One of the sexiest things about Burning Man — which you don’t always hear in the media — is that we’re the largest practicing Leave No Trace event in the world. BOOM! We build it, we burn it, we blow it up, and we make it all disappear so it looks like nothing ever happened.

The Man explodes on September 1, 2012. Photo by Neil Girling. Click for original.

With 50,000+ attendees in 2012, Burning Man is the largest gathering on U.S. Public Lands. The Bureau of Land Management permits us to celebrate our culture in the Black Rock Desert, but we must make sure the playa is returned to its pristine condition, Leaving No Trace behind. After all, it is public land and it’s meant to be shared by everyone.

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Moopers at the starting line. Photo by Vertumnus. Click to enlarge!

Hello, hello, HELLO to all you MOOP maniacs and line sweepers extraordinaire! Welcome to our LIVE coverage of the event of the year, the thrilling final quarter of Burning Man 2012, the nail-biting conclusion to a rollercoaster season. That’s right: We’re about to start creating this year’s MOOP Map.

If you’re tuning in for the first time, here’s what you need to know: Burning Man may technically be over, but for the 115 members of the Playa Restoration team, it’s just getting going. These all-star, highly attuned and maniacally dedicated moopers are about to comb the width and breadth of Black Rock City, picking up every last piece of MOOP they can before time runs out. What will they find? Will they finish in time? We’re about to find out.

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Tales From The Playa are dreams and memories of events that took place at Burning Man, as told by its participants.

“EGO” (20 feet high letters) Burning Man 2012 Laura Kimpton and Mike Garlington

Burning Man 2012: Big letters spelling E-G-O on the playa horizon. Designed to burn. Conceived and produced by Laura Kimpton (of O-I-N-K and L-O-V-E fame), and built by Mike Garlington.

One of many altars on the “O” of EGO. Burning Man 2012.

Mike’s take on EGO: he and his girlfriend poured hundreds of gypsum plaster casts of evocative objects found in life and at the dump. The objects de EGO were then spraypainted gold and rigged onto the wooden frames loaded with firewood. The objects were designed to survive the burn. Mike instructed participants to dig through the ashes after the fire to find symbols that survived. Read more »

Eggs Bar on Center Camp

Eva told Mike and I a story yesterday when we were at Eggchair’s bar in Center Camp and I cannot attest to the facts nor the timelines, but our discussion of art tours took a bit of a detour and she said something very close to this.

“Back in 1993 Larry Harvey wanted to bring a porta pottie to the playa for what they were calling ‘Burning Man’ and he came over to my place and helped me pack my van for the trip. He helped me entirely pack but I think he was waiting for that twenty dollars we all were putting in to pool our money for the porta pottie because none of us had much money.”

“We finished packing, I gave him the twenty dollars and he took a napkin and wrote down the directions to the playa with ‘get off the playa here’ and ‘go 3.5 miles this direction then go 1 mile that direction.’ He then wrote ‘Paid 20$ for porta potties’ and signed it Larry Harvey.”

“So, I came up here to Black Rock and followed the directions. It was Wednesday and we didn’t burn the Man until Sunday then so I finally find where they are and Larry is in a pup tent and the Man is in the back of a pickup with about twenty people camping there. On Sunday it was a great burn and about a thousand people showed up, a lot of them from Reno.”

Mike took a sip of his drink and said, “Do you still have that napkin? That might be worth something. It sounds like one of the first tickets to Burning Man ever.”

Eva thought a second then said, “No, there wasn’t any toilet paper in the porta potties so I had to use it to wipe. I’d already followed the directions and found Burning Man.”

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The MOOP Squad is an international litter-fighting phenom!

Well folks, this is it. Burning Man starts in two days, the Man burns in seven — and as we Playa Restoration crew members like to say, it’s just ten days to cleanup!

That’s right: While you’re preparing for the biggest, weirdest week of the year, we’re already itching to get out there and start picking up MOOP!

Why are we so excited to clean up our city? One simple reason:

When Burning Man cleans up after itself, Burning Man gets to happen again next year.

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Exodus photo by Danger Ranger

You know how every year when you leave Burning Man after partying your butt off, interacting with amazing art, seeing your friends and making new ones, and wandering around an amazing city unlike any you’ve ever encountered that magically rises up out of a prehistoric lakebed; you go home and take a shower and maybe have a beer and think about how great that was? Well, there are people still out in those dust storms and that searing heat making sure everything is torn down, stowed and shipped and any little bits of trash you possibly, accidentally were inconsiderate about not taking home with you are being all picked up so we can throw this little event again next year.

DA and crew, photo by fling93

I was talking with DA who runs the Playa Restoration (or Resto) Crew and he told me how when the event is over they spend weeks tearing down Black Rock City’s structures and then walking miles each day in the sun over grids, making sure to pick up every last bit of trash that may have made it to the playa floor. The goal is to leave the playa as clean as it was before the event and it is hard, grueling work. They start early in the morning and DA tells me that around 3:15 in the afternoon someone will invariably yell “Morale!” and the crew will stop, go to the shade and drink a couple cold beers and eat some snacks. This makes the remaining two hours go by faster.

That beer and snacks are donated by you, kind citizen of Black Rock City.

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Welcome back to The Burner’s Guide to Leaving No Trace, your guide to being a stellar Black Rock Citizen and helping Burning Man leave the desert spotless so it can all happen again next year!

But listen, I’ve had enough of chatting about how to be responsible, pack light, drop off your trash & recycling on the way home … let’s get to the good stuff! Let’s go to Burning Man and party down with Recycle Camp!

Do not board the Blue Duck, especially if you are made of metal.

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