I played a Shadow Lord Theurge in the OryCon Werewolf LARP a couple years ago, I probably know him. Never got up there to play again, but the character didn't mesh well with their group ethic (lots of Fianna and Ahrouns).
I did play in a standalone WWLARP up in Portland but it disintegrated last year, midstory — just as my character was about to do his Philodox Adren challenge...
Eugene and Portland are about 100 miles apart. There's a thriving Portland Burn community but unfortunately they all smoke...yecch...
Regarding Burning Man camps:
A theme camp is basically a camp with a visual/interactivity theme. Mostly nowadays a camp's theme is "Oooh, let's set up a bar and a groovy dance floor and have a deejay bring his gear out to mix it up for us!"

One group back in '01 recreated the Emerald City of Oz and I got all excited, thinking they were doing a Wizard of Oz theme camp with costumes and such — nah, it was just a rave camp and the Emerald City was just a very expensive, ostentatious backdrop.

Now everyone and his brother's cousin's dog is doing it. One of the first reasons (before I found out I had cancer

) I stayed home this year was "I'm not busting my a**, dragging 1500 pounds of gear 450 miles one way, just to go on a week-long pub-crawl!!"
Trinity, there's a great Burn community in your neck of the woods. They coordinate a semi truck to get peoples' gear out to the Playa and back every year. There are ways to make sure you don't do a faceplant, too. The trick is to sleep during the hot hours and go nocturnal, and always, always, always, have water at your side. Accept that you won't see and catch everything and pace yourself.
I like to arrive at dusk so I have enough light to put a quick camp up, shade and shelter, eat cold meals and charge up the solar lanterns and shower the next day and take it easy so my body can adjust. Then put up, refine and trick out the camp the next day when I'm compressed (shaking down and tweaking camp throughout the week is allowed). Fortunately they let theme camps in a few days early for just that reason.