LOST: furry cheetah vest

Many things lost at counterculture gathering

Lindsay Weiss once lost her cellphone and got it back, so she and a friend knew what they had to do when they discovered a camera under a pew during a festival in the Nevada desert even though it meant giving up their coveted, shady seat for a musical performance.

The friends snapped a quick selfie and took the device to the lost-and-found, so the owner could claim it and the pair could “forever be a part of their journey,” Weiss said.

“Losing something out there on the playa makes its mark on your trip,” she said of the sprawling counterculture gathering known as Burning Man. “Kinda makes you feel like a loser.”

Cameras and IDs are among the more common belongings that end up in the lost-and found after the event billed as North America’s largest outdoor arts festival. Other items left behind in the dusty, 5-square-mile (13-sq. kilometre) encampment include shoes, keys, stuffed animals - even dentures.

Still missing are a marching band hat with gold mirror tiles, a furry cheetah vest, a headdress with horns and a chainmail loincloth skirt

“As of mid-November, we’ve recovered 2,479 items and returned 1,279,” said Terry Schoop, who helps oversee the recovery operation at Burning Man’s San Francisco headquarters. “We have about a 60 per cent return rate,” he told The Associated Press.

Not bad for a temporary community of 60,000 artists, free spirits, old hippies and young thrill-seekers who descend on a dried-up ancient lake bed in the Black Rock Desert for an adventure combining wilderness camping with avant-garde performance 120 miles (193 kilometres) north of Reno.

The usual suspects top this year’s list of Most Frequently Lost in the land of drum circles and psychedelic art cars: 582 cellphones, 570 backpacks or bags and 529 drivers’ licenses, passports or other forms of identification.

Unclaimed items are listed on Burning Man’s official website with photos and lot numbers. They include more than 200 shirts or tops, 100 jackets, 80 hydration backpacks, 50 pairs of eyeglasses, six suitcases and several dozen water bottles, including one with the desert appropriate warning: “Stop Not Drinking.”

“Your item may look different after rolling in the dust,” the website advises. It links to the online e-Playa forum, which has no photos, just brief descriptions of things Burners found: a “big bag of ladies clothes,” a piano tuning kit, a “small stuffed cow with cowboy hat” and one black Dr. Martens combat boot the latter of little consolation to the gal looking for a GREEN Dr. Martens boot (size 5).