Stacks of wide black panels and construction equipment fill a West Oakland warehouse where the Temple of the Deep is being assembled. The structure will be the second most significant installation at Burning Man and the final structure to burn during the event's closing ceremony. The 'deep' name refers to grief and to the temple's role as a place for mourning and leaving tributes. About 130 tons of wood comprise the build, with prebuilt segments transported to sites near Black Rock City and remaining pieces staged in the Bay Area. Around 700 volunteers helped assemble the temple into a 44-foot-tall, 105-foot-wide structure.
Standing in the West Oakland warehouse, you wouldn't have suspected that anything sacred was under construction. Stacks of wide, black wooden panels stand spaced out across the concrete floor. An ear-splitting drill whines from an adjacent lot. A crane stands off to the side, and a whiteboard leans against the wall, with a reminder scrawled in dry-erase marker: "THE TEMPLE BURNS IN 35 DAYS."
But at the time of reporting in July, it's just wood, specifically around 130 tons of wood split between this West Oakland warehouse and the Black Rock Desert. When we speak to Arraiz, six truckloads of prebuilt segments have already been hauled to towns near Black Rock City in Nevada, and four truckloads remain in the Bay Area. (Now, all of the temple's pieces are on the playa.)
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