At Burning Man, a camp known for its steam room has grown over seven years into one of Black Rock City's rituals, built around a Japanese wood-fired water heater retrofitted with a propane insert to turn it into what one builder calls a self-contained desert steam room. Visitors, some carrying their own Great Lakes tradition of sauna and cold water immersion from home, describe it as both a physical practice and an emotional one: a place for reflective circles after other camp activities, for vulnerability without the usual guards up, and for the kind of communal heat that turns strangers into something closer to family for the length of a session.