Camp Amazon!

News! We have a new website up. I'm leaving this up, mostly unchanged, for historical reference. Camp Amazon will be at Burning Man 2007. If you would like to participate, join the club on Yahoo.

Camp Amazon is now a Club on Yahoo. Those who are interested in joining the tribe are advised to join the Yahoo Club. As the date of Burning Man approaches, nearly all of the communications will be done via that site. Currently, we have 18 members (including myself) who have joined the tribe via Yahoo Clubs. We are still accepting new members. For those who would like to join, establish a Yahoo ID, and then you should be able to join. Also, if you have positive suggestions, that’s not a bad place to post them. Also, we now have a map of the site.

Last year I went to Burning Man for the first time. I won’t say that it changed me as a person, because in all honesty it didn’t. However, it was amazing, and I plan on going again this year. Burning Man was very much what I felt I had been looking for over the course of my life. Most of my time there was spent wandering around the streets with a dazed look on my face (bear in mind that I never use drugs. Burning Man is just that amazing sober,) or wandering across the playa pretending to be an intrepid desert explorer. For those who don’t know what Burning Man is, I’ve included a link to their webpage at the top of this page. The best way for me to describe it is 30,000 mad genius artist types converge in the middle of the Nevada desert, build a city designed to last less than two weeks, create things, burn things, and disappear without a trace, only to do it all again the next year.

So I decided that this year I would organize a theme camp: Camp Amazon! Currently, I’m recruiting fellow Amazons who are up for a trip to the desert in the middle of summer to realize this vision. The vision itself is malleable, flexible to what resources the members of our camp can bring to our community. I would like a large communal tent area with chairs, couches, potted silk plants, lanterns, candles, sculptures and such. I have this idea for a mosaic in the center of the tent, with basins for people to wash their feet in when they enter (5 days of graduated layers of dust, mud, sunscreen, and sweat gets old). There can be cloth hangings around the interior with pictures of wolves, dragons, a stag (of course, hail Artemis!), and such. There should also be a screened kitchen pavilion, and a private shower tent. Sleeping arrangements are easy… individuals or groups can provide their own tents. I would love to have a wall surrounding our encampment.

This year’s theme at Burning Man is the Seven Ages of Man. One of the ages is that of Soldier, which has representation via an arena/stadium. I’m hoping that we can arrange for archery practice/workshops in the stadium. It would be great to do live steel demonstrations, too. Also, part of the activities is for people to receive passports, and go through abbreviated symbolic rites for each age of Man. In my application for Camp Amazon as a theme camp, I requested that we be one of the camps available to stamp passports for the Soldier stage. If we are one of the camps given that responsibility, then we can come up with an appropriate ritual. (Combat via foam weapons? Water balloons? Stare down? )

Good News! We get to stamp passports!

I’ve also come up with a logo. I’m hoping to have amulets with the logo on them for tribal members (males will have dog tags instead), and temporary tattoos.

Anyone who is interested can contact me at glamazonwarrior@yahoo.com.

You can return to my homepage, or go to my writings.