The Platform That Fell

We were ambitious. The plan was a two-year project: build a larger platform in 2019, then add a tower the following year — a lighthouse, a beacon you could navigate Borderland by.

We worked hard. At someone else's request, and rather late in the process, we were asked to coat the entire structure with tar to preserve it. The camp spent days doing it. The smell was overwhelming, the work was exhausting, and we leaned into it by brewing Lapsang Souchong — smoky tea for a smoky camp. That year also included a magick workshop, which in retrospect may or may not have helped with what came next.

On the Tuesday evening we opened the platform with a live pianist and a violinist. Around fifty people gathered for the sunset. Then the platform collapsed.

Several people were hurt — nothing life-threatening, but it was traumatic for everyone. In the days that followed we held a long and honest postmortem about construction safety for large-scale art at Borderland. It was a hard burn.

But the day after the collapse, we pulled the platform back up and held a Japanese tea ceremony on it anyway. It was supposed to be an epic tea house. It became a mediocre tar-smelling patio. We were proud of it anyway.