Every year around Labor Day weekend, about 75,000 people converge on the Black Rock Desert in Nevada to build a city. Occupying more than 14,000 acres, the pop-up metropolis features distinctive neighborhoods, extensive dining and entertainment, even a small airport. I find no hint of this when I visit the playa, or desert basin, on a sunny afternoon in March. All I see is a flat expanse of white alkaline soil, nearly identical to what pioneers described in their 19th-century journals. The disappearing act is by design. It's one of the core attributes of Black Rock City, guided by the tenets of the event for which this temporary metropolis is built: the annual pyrotechnic extravaganza known as Burning Man. Yet the weeklong festival's leave-no-trace ethos has not stopped archaeologist Carolyn White from studying the city as she would any other vanished civilization. In fact, the cyclically is one of the qualities that draws her here year after year.
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机译：每年劳动节周末前后，大约有75,000人聚集在内华达州的黑岩沙漠（Black Rock Desert）上，以建设一座城市。这座弹出式大都市占地14,000英亩，拥有独特的社区，广泛的餐饮和娱乐场所，甚至还有一个小型机场。在三月的一个阳光明媚的下午，当我访问普拉亚或沙漠盆地时，我没有发现任何暗示。我所看到的只是一片平坦的白色碱性土壤，几乎与先驱在其19世纪期刊中所描述的相同。消失的行为是设计使然。它是黑岩城的核心属性之一，以建立这个临时大都会的活动宗旨为指导：一年一度的烟火盛宴，称为“燃烧人”。然而，为期一周的节日无休止的精神风情并未阻止考古学家卡洛琳·怀特像其他任何消失的文明一样研究这座城市。实际上，周期性地吸引她是年复一年的特质之一。
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