Out To The Playa

Tuesday 26th August, 12 noon

Wow, what a day! Right now I'm sat in the back of Tony's dad's Dodge bus, who is our Canadian neighbour, our playa family. A good time to take stock and reflect on the last 24 hours. We've just finished making camp, by stringing 2 tarpaulins joined with cable ties across between the bus and our Jeep. It's quite low, but with a temperature of 37C / 99F, shade is golden. We got up at 9.30am this morning, awoken by the sun.

So yesterday we checked out of our motel, found lunch and headed out to find Black Rock City, 120 miles North-by-North-East of Reno (click for route). We filled up the tank and took the 80 East back the way we came for 28 miles. Here, we turned North and stopped at the petrol station, taking stock of the Burning Man folk who were heading the same way. Beautiful, excited, alive with the buzz of the prospect of that which I could not yet imagine. We hit the road to Gerlach with a tense sense of venturing out into the unknown.

I hadn't really been briefed on what to expect out here. I knew there was a festival in the desert. I'd never been to a desert before, so that was fairly meaningless, other than images conjured of hot and dry. My lips were beginning to feel the heat. I am going to test a theory |'ve heard that if you try to refrain from applying artificial substances to your lips, they naturally produce wax to protect them from the elements they face. I'll let you know how it goes. The other things I'd heard are that there is no market economy; no money to exchange for goods. So, we're fully stocked on water and food - ready to cook a few big meals and share, and hopefully others will do the same.

The route to Black Rock City past Pyramid Lake is so sublime the 'scenic route' sign smacks of superfluity. At 6000ft (2000m) elevation, we stand twice as high as the highest point in the UK, but not quite at the top of the Alps. The baking heat renders the soil barely able to sustain life - here and there are dotted trees and shrubs, underneath each of the former a structure takes advantage of the shade. A few settlements line the road, and a couple of Indian Reservations stand proudly in the midst of a strained history. We snaked through, slowed down by a procession closing up becoming a convoy. As we coasted to walking pace, I noticed the wind pick up gently. As I looked to the horizon to hope to make out the oncoming city of the desert, dust clouds obscured visibility beyond a couple of miles. By my calculations, Black Rock City was actually smack in the middle of the dust cloud.

We passed a caravan burnt out to a cinder. It reminded me of the guy we stopped a few days earlier driving with the hitchhikers at night, whose trailer safety chain was dragging along the tarmac, creating an effect like a sparkler. He was grateful. This guy looked less fortunate, the dry heat must've set his caravan up like a tinderbox.

We closed the windows, the dust picking up opacity and velocity to that of a fine morning mist. Still going walking pace, we began to stop occasionally. Then the duration of the stops outweighed the gos and we gradually ground to a halt. Later we found out that this was because they closed the gates because the eye of the dust storm as I'd calculated was causing chaos and they only opened them again after 10 hours - about 9pm. We inched forwards and left the tarmac for a gravel track, and in my excitement I switched to 4 wheel drive. The fine morning mist was becoming full whiteout, with visibility reducing to 50 metres at times. It seemed magical to be sitting in a queue of vehicles, piled high with bicycles, art and who-knows-what, waiting to be taken into a whiteout dust cloud that seemed to make the show and the spectacle as dramatic as could be wished for - but then it depends on whether you wish for semi-apocyliptic conditions I suppose.


As one lane split into 2, then 4, then 6, we took the right lane as directed for the 'will call' tickets - to be picked up on the gate - still inching forwards at 15 minute intervals. We filtered off to the right, and joined the last line of the back of a block of about 500 vehicles, parked away from the main queue. We collected our tickets, and walked back to the car. As I walked back from the toilets, I heard a shout of my name in an English accent. I turned, surprised to find myself standing at the front end of my friends' car, the only people here that I knew before, from my home city of Bristol. I hadn't imagined that finding my friends in a city of 70,000 people - before I'd even thought about looking - was going to be quite that easy!

We caught up on stories, and decided that the only way to get in on that night was going to be the break away from the block we were parked in, and rejoin the main queue. Within an hour, we had out tickets taken, the boot checked for food and water, and were at the greeters. As we were Burning Man virgins, we were initiated into this magical clique in the warmest, friendliest way. We were advised to embrace the dust and the playa, not to fight it.

We split with our friends, who were camped with "Shift", a camp of about 80 where private toilets, showers and 3 meals a day were provided by the camp (for $500!). We took another turn on the road, and another, and in pitch dark looked for a spot. We pulled in, had a quick survey and turned sideways to the prevailing wind. The Dodge bus with Tony, Rosa and Jonas pulled in just after us and we met our playa family. They too were virgins. We shared their cold beers and talked into the night.