Diary: The experience of arrival
Thursday
Highway 447 slices through rural Nevada. The air is more pristine than the ugly brown cloud that was laying dormant over the Las Vegas Valley this morning. It’s nearly noon. Burners in RVs loaded with bicycles chug along slowly. Window-painted SUVs with flower-adorned bicycles tacked neatly to the back speed past, changing lanes, speeding more, changing lanes. No brotherly nods, waves, honks or wild camaraderie you’d expect to find on a paved road headed to a dusty campground that is revered for its open-armed welcome of unity and self expression. It’s late Thursday morning and everybody’s just hell bent on getting there. Thousands more are on their way. Gerlach is the last stop. BBQ stands line the roads.
Booths advertise tie-dye shirts and other goodies to help you celebrate, to help you unwind and forget corporate America, sooty cities, lunch appointments and errands. Roadside taxidermy booths sell mounted buckheads. Buckheads? None of the naked people, painted people, skirted, bedazzled and high people seem the buckhead-on-the-wall type. At the gate, burning-man virgins are propped against a bell that vibrates on their bodies, their first thrill.
1:30 p.m. Thursday
Burners move through the dirt streets, past the dusty tents, RVs and furry sofas. It’s quiet. It’s hazy. The dust on the playa has yet to swarm the campground, but at sundown it could be equal to the brown mess over Las Vegas. Tiffany sweeps glow jewelry and sequins up from the floor of the RV. The place is littered with camera equipment, computers, chords, dishes and produce. The neighbors here in Camp Muttsburough are mysteriously absent.
