The Carnival at the End of the World

Black Rock Desert. Tuesday/Wednesday, Aug 30th/31st 2005, right around midnight.

It's easy to forget this now, but back in 2005 it wasn't quite as easy to see photos and videos of everything under the sun. The infrastructure for sharing them was far less developed than it is now. We couldn't see all of our friends' photos on Facebook because Facebook was barely even a thing and most of us weren't on it. Back then, we didn't all carry Internet-connected digital cameras with us everywhere we went. Only ten years ago, but a different world.

Thus I was privileged to go to my first Burning Man with no clear idea of what I'd be experiencing. I had only two friends who'd been there, and one of them was the reason I was going. I had some vague sense of the place, picked up as rumors and hearsay, but I'd never seen pictures, never had an in-depth conversation about it. It was terra incognita.

I sat in the back seat on the drive up while Amanda and Jordan talked about Burning Man in the front. They had a sort of been-there-done-that cool about them in their conversation about it, but it wasn't hard to tell that they were very excited to get there.

It's not a long drive from the Bay Area to the Black Rock Desert--up and over the Sierras on I-80 and down into Reno, another 40 or so to miles east to Fernley, then pretty much due north on NV-447 for about 80 miles to the twin towns of Empire and Gerlach and then a little bit beyond. We did most of this in the dark. I wouldn't see the landscape until the next morning.

It was around midnight, maybe just before or just after, when we came around the big curve outside Gerlach and I caught my first glimpse of Black Rock City. I had imagined Burning Man as a bunch of hippies camping in the desert, but that first glimpse spoke of something far more wondrous. I was truly seeing a city. A cloud of dust hovered low in the sky above it, and the lights--lights, as of a carnival midway--lit the cloud into a glow.

I had a feeling of: "What have I gotten myself into?"

We picked up my ticket at will call, passed the Greeters' Station, and drove into the city. Whatever I'd been expecting, Burning Man instantly defied it. People in outlandish costumes walked or biked the streets, lit up in electro-luminescent wire. Cars made over into rolling, glowing sculptures prowled the streets as well. Streets. There were streets! We passed a glowing Cheshire Cat, built atop some hidden vehicle underneath. Its eyes were spinning. So were mine.

I had expected hippies camping in the desert, and instead I found myself in a city with an energy unlike anything I'd ever experienced before.

Words came to me: "The Carnival at the End of the World."

We pulled into camp, where a raucous EDM party was well underway. Amanda and Jordan practically leapt from the car and immediately disappeared into the crowd. I stepped down onto the playa. The moment my feet touched the ground, I felt a buzz, as of an electric current, radiate up through the ground and into my body. I'd never experienced the energy of a place as a physical sensation before, and it freaked me the hell out. I was totally overwhelmed. Dropping right into the party was way, way more than I could imagine dealing with right then. I needed some time to get my bearings. I picked a direction and started walking, to see what I would see.

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