35 miles south of Nixon, Nevada, early afternoon

I was somewhere on the edge of the Black Rock Desert when I saw my first flash of The Fear. What was I doing with a car full of camping gear and two-weeks worth of water, food, and drugs on the road to Burning Man? The open road of Nevada State Route 447 gave me plenty of time to ponder my pilgrimage. What does it mean? What would I gain? What would I lose? I entered this affair with one piece of wisdom: No Expectations. This should be one of the Ten Principles that guides the whole ordeal, but speaking as a rookie, what did I know?

For now, I was embracing transience and I had the freedom to disappear from the grid. I could plunge into obscurity for a two-week long vacation in the Nevada desert. I called it a “retreat” to my coworkers and clients as I was looking to Black Rock City to get away from my known world. It would be here in Nevada that I would try to get my proverbial shit together, and I was hoping that this Burning Man experiment would be the hard reboot I needed. And yet, here I was, less than one hundred miles away from this soon to be city in the desert, wondering if the whole idea was a huge mistake. The creep of panic floods into my elbows and numbs my arms.

Even before setting boots on the playa, I heard reports of an overzealous police force busting pilgrims on the road to Black Rock City. The cops were pulling folks over for charges that sounded like superficial nonsense. Alleged offenses such as: one mile over the speed limit, one mile under the speed limit, bike rack obscuring license plate, bike rack obscuring rear view, under-inflated tires, too many stickers on the windows, and one claim of a citation for possessing an offensive bumper sticker. I'd hate to see the poor cop sent into a frothing rage because the VW Vanagon slowly rolling through town proudly proclaimed “I brake for hippies ”.

It would seem that all these tenuous charges were an attempt to get the spooked drivers to relent to 45 to 60-minute long vehicle searches. I was paranoid and on my guard as I crossed through the first speed trap. The 70mph sprint on State Route 447 lurched into a slow, school-zone speed at the Nixon town limits. I had a buffer of a full mile between me and the next vehicle in either direction. But the moment I hit the first posted 25 mile-per-hour marker, a large white truck swooped in behind me.

Festooned with floodlights and bristling with radio antennae, the government rig closed distance. He tailgated me to within 18 inches, but I didn’t flinch. I knew I'd been marked, and The Man was already sizing me up. I still had to scrub off a lot of speed. I downshifted again and Great White—my 2001 Toyota Camry with her factory ice white paint job—spun her engine into the red edge of the torque band. My speedometer reported 29 miles-per-hour and I rode hard on the brakes. This would be close. I didn’t want this Fed to hassle me and give me a ticket for my obvious infraction. And I especially didn’t want a search team tearing through my car. I wasn't completely stupid—I stashed all my contraband in one of Great White’s smuggling compartments. Still, a creeping fear crawled into my headspace: A seething cop forces me to consent to a search while the drug dog picks up on the scent of the copious amount of ganja stuffed into the spare tire well.

Remain calm. Hands at 10 and 2. Or is it 3 and 9?—nevermind. Steel yourself. The law enforcement truck stuck to my bumper for one full white-knuckle, low speed mile. Finding nothing but a white dude in a white Toyota 4-door, packed to the frame with camping gear, the pig suddenly whipped a tight U-turn and blasted south, back on his patrol to pick off a different mark. Once I saw the law disappear beyond the range of the rear-view mirror, I heaved a sigh of relief and felt like a smuggler running a blockade. No new marks on my arrest record today, good sir, but I knew it was only a matter of time before the cop would flash the lights and accost a different traveler on their way to That Thing In The Desert.

With just one hour to go before hitting the road to the Gate, the lonely ride across empty lake basins and over barren mountain ranges feels like a full day’s journey.

The tiny village of Gerlach behind me, I arrived at the mouth of the serpentine Gate Road. This is the only public access between the real world and the playa city. Now, more than a week before The Event, this three mile long multi-lane road to Black Rock City was quiet and empty. I took the final turn and Great White's wheels left the black tarmac and rolled onto the chalky lake bed. The posted speed was 10 miles-per-hour, so I kept Great White in second gear and let her creep. My path to the city was clear, coned off, and flagged with little red pennants rippling in the desert’s breeze. The vast sodic basin looked so open, like an airfield rolled flat onto a crusty white mirror.

I can see why they insisted on such slow speeds. Even at a snail's pace, Great White kicked up a huge billow of dust and the south-westerly winds blasted it directly into the mouth of the city. Just as I lost myself in awe of the size and scale of this remote place, another swelling cloud of dust overtook me, and a cherry-red Prius emerged to rumble across the washboard playa. I caught a glimpse of the aging man behind the wheel, flaunting the rules and ignoring the clearly posted speed limits. My guess was that he wanted to whip that 99-horsepower electric engine up and rip across the open playa and set his land speed record. I let him surge ahead as we neared The Gate. This was the toothy maw of Black Rock City and functioned as its only public entrance and as a security checkpoint. I idled along in a short line of cars before a denim-clad, red-bearded Australian man directed me to head into will call before they could let me in.

I merged out of this Gate traffic to the will call parking lot. Already feeling the sweaty pins of anxiety, I gathered my documents and receipts and printed emails and climbed out of Great White. Instantly, the first gust of dust clung to my clammy skin, my road stress induced sweat working like a glue to turn this fine playa powder into a sticky glaze.

I set foot on the cracked playa lake bed for the first time ever and approached the only structure in miles: The Box Office Will Call. Wooden 4"x4" posts sunk into the ground supported a heavy tarp shade and cleanly roped queue underneath. Paperwork in hand, I ducked into the shaded area. The people in line were friendly, chatting and mingling, and many of them shared their near-miss stories with law enforcement.

From the scenes they described, it was as if there were dozens of cops set up like highwaymen bandits—a sticky federal speed trap in the tiny Reservation town of Nixon. By my estimate, they were pulling over every 5th to 8th vehicle, and insisting on searches of each passenger and every hidden crevice.

Having survived their travels, the people standing in this line were here early and eager to build. They were on teams tasked to create something, be it city infrastructure or art or both. This was not their first burn. They were experienced and calm, as if they were in line for a roller coaster they’d been riding all afternoon. The short line moved at a slow but steady pace as these intrepid people were processed one-by-one and given their credentials through the only open ticket window. When my turn came, I stepped under the humming green glow of the cannibalized traffic light illuminating Window 1.

Through it, a lithe, dark-haired girl greeted me. She wore big square glasses, a black tank-top, and a necklace with toy block letters that spelled CON*QUESO. She made a big smile as I shoved my pile of confirmation papers and government issued ID through the slot. For whatever reason, I was nervous. Was this enough? Was I in the right line? Would they let me in? Her expression quickly turned sour as she processed my papers. Her tablet reported some grim news—my credentials were not supposed to allow me in until Monday, a full 48 hours away. I felt gut-shot. This is it, I thought, this is how the adventure ends before it begins. Improper paperwork at the city gates would send me back to Gerlach in a spiral of self-pity that would likely culminate in heavy drug abuse and reckless choices. I sagged from the window and accepted my fate.

“Let me see what I can do,” she cooed. She yanked a radio from its base and squawked into it with CB speak, complete with callsigns and trucker jargon. I moved away from the spot in front of the window where perfumed, 68℉ air flooded into the desert dry. I glanced back at the waiting line. I had been standing with others in the line for thirty minutes, but my single turn at the only open Box Office window had taken at least that long. The mirthful conversation from earlier had turned into a more somber, contemplative “why the fuck is this guy taking so long?”

I stepped aside and tried to make myself small and unnoticeable. A few more folks walked to the window and within moments walked away with ticket and vehicle pass in hand. These early arrivals were also getting adorned with official credential wristbands, wearing them as proudly as gold medal Olympians. I could hear the loud crackle of a CB radio from my perch outside the Box Office window. A voice replied: “Yep, I see it right here. Yep. Yep. 10-4. Thanks, Joy. Con Queso out.”

Her soft hand beckoned me back to the window. She wore a sheepish smile as she admitted her mistake: My pre-approved ticket was hidden in plain sight. We shared a few sentences of flirtatious banter before she handed it over and was profusely nice about it, apologizing for the delay. I appreciated her effort, and had a fond thought that there was someone in the city looking out for me. I had my ticket and work visa. My passport was approved for entry and I could cross the orange fence.

While BRC may be an all inclusive community, the migration laws at the border are draconian. I thanked the diligence and friendliness of the girl at the box office window and I was free to slide back through The Gate and enter the city.

Box Camp (5:45 & E), late afternoon

Box Camp—a large staff camp located a few diagonal blocks south of the main Center Camp—was in its infancy when I arrived.

Spread sparsely across a 1.5 acre parcel were tents and shades dedicated to the crew who designed, constructed, and staffed the Black Rock City Box Office, which includes the will call ticketing counter I just processed through. The people in Box Camp were the face of Black Rock City—often the first human beings you encounter when you pick up your tickets at this week-long art party on the playa desert.

Box Camp lay nestled between Perimeter, Gate, and Exodus (commonly referred to as the utility-company sounding acronym of PG&E) to the southeast and the digital ticketing support staff to the northwest. Nearby was the camp for the staff of the Center Camp Café.

This section of centrally located neighborhood in this radial garden city was dedicated to the paid staff and volunteer crew who were part of the larger Burning Man Organization (referred to collectively as BMORGers or, robotically, The Borg). These are the folks who take a much more active role in bringing the empty playa to life and running the whole city from its conception to its destruction, and now I walked among them.

As I made my way to set up my 25 square-foot tent parcel, subdivided out from the lot by the camp coordinator, “Knotty”, as he was playa named, took me on a walking tour through each of the Box Camp features: the daily water cooler deliveries, the kitchen and greywater station, the 15’ observation deck, and—most importantly—the regularly cleaned bank of outhouses. The Borg provided these services and it made for quite a luxurious camping experience on what would otherwise be an inhospitable, barren landscape.

I had expected that I would be completely roughing it in the dust for the next few weeks, but it seems that having expectations comes as a severe detriment out here.

The next person I encountered was “Joy”, who I knew from my college days. Joy was the lead coordinator for staff at the Box and is the one responsible for getting a ticket into my hand. I got my first taste of the hugging culture in Black Rock City as Joy wrapped her arms around me like a momma bear and we squeezed out our greeting. We had that kind of lively, frantic exchange with each other, where even though we hadn’t seen each other in years, we really did see eye to eye, even if just for a moment. She’s just that type of person who wants to make sure everyone in the group is happy and that everyone’s needs are being met.

After setting up my simple camp of a tarp and a tent, I ran into Con Queso again and waved her a fond hello. She failed to recognize me even though we’d met for a prolonged period at the box office just hours ago. The blur of people you see at the box makes it difficult to match each esoteric playa name to a face, and the sheer number of people you might meet means it’s difficult to truly connect when you see 30 faces and hear 30 names every half hour. Now that she knew I was part of the Box Camp community and not a rando whizzing through the Box Office window, we exchanged pleasant conversation that culminated in making a variety of bird calls at each other—her rendition of a peacock’s mating call was spot on—because making bird noises at people is something you do at Burning Man.

Nimbus was the last person I would meet in camp today and the most senior of all the Box Camp BMorgers. She was short in stature, but her presence commanded my reverence from afar. We had a delightful exchange of pleasantries—she wanted to make sure all the fledgling and rookie Box Office crew felt welcomed—cut short by a crackling call through her walkie-talkie, strapped to her tactical gear over her emerald green dress, which twirled playfully in the desert breeze as she whisked away to take care of Borg business, disappearing into a swirl of dust.

Lower Playa, late evening

I timed my arrival in Black Rock City to see the Early Man burn—a pyrotechnical celebration uniting all the BMorgers by raging firelight. Public works, infrastructure, and builder teams gather mid-playa at nightfall on the Saturday a full week before the main event burn. I ventured out with the Box Office folks as we mingled within the crowd of many hundreds of people as the last remaining light of sundown passed into the darkness of night.

Tonight’s spectacle featured wooden sculptures laden with boxes of fireworks rigged to be ignited. We moved as a tight group, arms interlaced at the elbows, as we shuffled along. We took care to browse the statues and effigies up close before the pyro team lit them ablaze. The atmosphere was festive and felt like a backyard BBQ, if your backyard was a thousand square miles.

Without much fanfare—or warning—the pyrotechnics began. The buffer around these infernos was not at all regulated—the official boundary extending to your own personal tolerance for flaming heat. As the crude wooden structures engulfed in flame, their cache of explosives cooked off haphazardly, blasting nearby spectators with shrapnel. The Box Office crew clutched each other tightly, screaming, and moved like a human amoeba, ten legs skittering away from the eye-level explosions. Joy was in the middle of the scrum, laughing maniacally, gripped with the thrill of being alive or the genuine fear of bodily injury. I couldn’t tell which.

After the flames died down and the adrenaline waned from our collective systems, most people stayed long after the last of the effigies had burned to embers. At this point, things felt very simple. The 10 Principles were at forefront of my mind, but they still remained unseen and unspoken. The conversation was relaxed and seemed to focus on the task at hand: build a city to support 80,000 souls.

Nearby, a dance party broke out. An art car, bristling with flamethrowers, threw tongues of fire into the dark night sky, warming our faces and sending our shadows stretching infinitely thin into the darkness that surrounded us. I milled about between groups for long enough to chat with these vintage burners—all excessively friendly people. In mingling with these build-week burner-types, it’s typical to immediately learn where they’ve come from and about how long they’ve been doing This Thing out here. Tonight, I met a lot of people from the Bay Area—the birthplace of Burning Man—and everyone I seemed to meet this evening were seasoned Burners with not a rookie in sight. Save for me, of course, but they didn’t know that.

I wondered if I was making a good impression on them—after all, I was here, gonzo documenting everything I could sense. Was I living presently enough in each moment while interacting and passively interviewing these fine folk? Apparently so, because after getting lost in a long discussion with a group from Santa Rosa about how “Early Man is the new Burning Man”, I lost track of my Box Camp group.

This primed me for a quick surge of panic as my normally finely-tuned sense of direction had noted literally zero landmarks to guide me back to camp. I was so new to the city, and the streets were barely marked, so navigation would be very challenging this close to pitch dark. Even if I could find my way through the mass of Early Man revelers, I would have a long walk back to Box Camp—assuming I could find it. Knowing fully well that I did need to find someone from my camp, I found a nice open space among the sea of people and let out the biggest bird call I could. I figured, since we’re all out here to live as immediately as possible, I might as well dive in head first and go full peacock: “KAW-AWW!”

I belted out a mighty squawk into the dark. Full lungs, just like Con Queso had taught me earlier in the day. “This might work well enough to get noticed,” I thought. I got a few strange glances from people, startled to hear the high-pitched bird-esque shout coming from a grungy bearded man, but nobody looked twice. I paused in complete stillness, waiting on the response, hoping it would come. And sure enough, there it followed. A distant, shrill, and airy KAH-AHHH. Unmistakably Con Queso.

I gleefully traced the bird-sound back through the crowd of Bay Area burners, back across the flames and the dancers, back to the Box Camp crew. Together again with the group and full of an energetic charge, we mounted our bikes and pushed further to the north, away from the camps and into the open, empty blackness of the Deep Playa at midnight.

The journey was a sight to behold. With so few lights on the horizon, the sky was its natural inky darkness, illuminated only by the first quarter moon. The winds kicked up a cool, moist air—along with a white chalky dust—as we navigated away from the middle of Black Rock City through the blowing silt and darkness to the edge.

Constructions were sparse and the main attractions of The Man and The Temple were incomplete—their wooden skeletons bathed under bright fluorescent utility light and fenced off from everyone not on the build team. There was not much else in the skyline that would function as a landmark, but as long as you could keep an eye on The Man, you could find your way home in this radial city. However, the desert playa can kick up dust storms with little warning. Visibility can drop from ten miles to ten feet in the time it takes to relieve yourself in an outhouse. Fearing getting lost, separated, and falling out of bird call range, I kept close to the Box Camp group as we made our way mounted on bikes: bearing 40 degrees northeast, traveling one and a half miles away from the The Man to the farthest edge and ultimate perimeter of the city: the orange nylon trash fence.

With headlamps and bike-mounted LEDs, our lights shone on a new towering wooden object materializing into view: Point-3. Marked by a 30-foot tall pole at the northeastern vertex of the city, Point-3 was one of five places you could go in Black Rock City to get the furthest away from The Man. Beyond this point, over the fence, was nothing.

We decided to take this moment and lie down on the playa—five abreast—bodies touching. We nestled into the dust, surrounded on all sides by a combination of breeze, moonlight, and a depth of darkness that I have trouble describing. We fell closely into each other and our awed silence. Looking up at the vivid field of stars and back upon this fledgling town that’s springing up out of the dry lake basin, nobody laying here complained about getting dusty. Nobody flinched at the idea of being on the ground. If anything, everyone in this moment had a genuine lust for the dust.

Shining a headlamp out into the vast expanse beyond the perimeter fence and seeing only darkness stretching into an infinite horizon was humbling. Our place is here, behind the fence, in the relative safety of the city limits. Best leave the depth of the unknown unplumbed, for now, and ride the bikes gleefully with these new friends, back to a firm air mattress and a warm sleeping bag.

Outside of Black Rock City, only a few people had a vague idea of where I was, and nobody knew for how long I would stay.

As of yesterday, I had absolutely zero cell phone coverage. I was about as severed from the default world as I would ever be, and if I wanted to, I could disappear. And here I was, tucked into my green and blue nylon tent, zippered shut to seal out the dust, like a caterpillar in a chrysalis.

I’m still in my original costume I drove onto the playa with. The Acapulco shirt accompanied with the butt-hugging khaki chinos create a simple and casual beach-goer look. I mean, la playa means ‘beach’ en español, so it’s a fool-proof wardrobe—comfortable, practical, and simple. Inspired by and maybe wholly embracing the spirit of Dr. Gonzo a little too much, I committed to appear as this mild-mannered, excessively helpful Rookie, living in BRC for the first time and really wearing that on my ultra short sleeve. Still brimming with a naive curiosity about what This Thing actually is, I was full of questions. Why is this strange gathering so profound to so many? There will be 80,000 people out here, maybe more, each having traveled great lengths and committed time and money to be here—who are they? What brings them to a city that has this finite lifespan? These would form the basis of the questions journos from SF Gate, Business Insider, and Buzzfeed would also undoubtedly be asking, but that was not my assignment.

I was also here on a personal introspective mission: Who could I be in this metro? What role was I playing? How could I be both observer and participant at the same time? And that parallax was the trouble—we’re defined in the world by how we appear in it. Specifically, the names we have and the clothes we wear and the cars we drive and the titles we possess. Everybody dresses up to play a part in the world whether they’re a barista or bus driver, and whether they’re conscious of it or not. What makes being out here weird is that anyone can be anything without the stuffy social architecture and judgement that happens out in Anytown, USA. Maybe it’s the free-love spirit alive and well that encourages all these people to shed the restraints of “polite” society and let their freak flags fly. Maybe here there’s this new level of freedom, incomprehensible to those “defaulters” out there—in their day-to-day, rat race grindset—that allows people to really embrace the spirit of who they are, not just who they appear to be. How we define ourselves and appear to others is shaped by our natures and nurtures and there’s a lot of societal pressures for us to be something to fit into a role in society. Everybody’s got to belong to something, right?

I snapped out of my funk and the worry that I was doing it wrong and unpacked my duffel bag to survey the rest of my wardrobe. Simple utilitarian stuff. Actual camping gear. Boring. No glitz, no gold, no glamor. That said, at this point in the week before the event actually begins, most people were in t-shirts and jeans. A lot of denim, a lot of utility belts, and a surprising amount of leather aprons and kilts. I’d seen photos and instagrams of the ornate, stunningly elaborate costumes that were on parade out here and wondered what kind of peacock it takes to get into that clique.

I’d have to acquire more costumes (ipso facto: identities?) as the week progressed. So far I’ve tripped through these playa introductions, sometimes giving a new, spur-of-the-moment playa name to each person I meet. Whatever I’m feeling at the time: “Hi, I’m ‘Getting Sleepy’.” I might say. “Nice to meet you, I’m ‘Totally Fucking Overwhelemed’. Yes, of the New Hampshire ‘Fucking Overwhelmed’s’.” I’m so busy thinking about which identity I want to be, I typically miss the name of the person I’m talking to. I recognize this as a problem—clinging to ego to embrace some identity reveals how much I’m actually ignoring the person I’m interacting with. It is not living in the present, it is living inside a thought-out performance. Some of these playa names in camp—seemingly quite sticky and nefarious sounding, like ‘Dumpster Fire’, ‘Meddler’, and ‘Struggle Bus’—are dealing me great amount of stress, both in learning the myriad name/face combinations presented to me as well as keeping my own identity straight. Who am I, again?

I threw my relatively dust-free clothing back into the air-tight tupperware bin and sat down on my bedding in a huff. I slapped my camp pillow and a plume of dust erupted from it, gently hanging in the still air of the tent.

It’s only the beginning of the trip and in my mind I’m already thinking: disaster.

My brain recoils in horror at the grim reality of the situation. When you can be anything, you become nothing. A drifting particle to change states at any moment into something completely different. I shook my head. It’s incredible to associate the slight irritant of a dusty pillow and an impermanent identity with the end of the world, but, here I was, moping in my tent. I needed some air.

In an effort to calm the nerves, I took a big breath and keep my Gonzo chinos on. I walked quietly out of camp, towards the center of this radial city, to pay my quiet respects to The Man still under construction. Alone down the 6 o’clock spoke, headed directly into the heart of the city, I passed a man festooned with camera gear, telephoto lenses and flashes dangling from what looked like a fisherman’s vest. He’s setting up a tripod for a long-shot to capture the faint glow of the early city. “It’s a lot more fun with friends,” he squawked at me. I shrugged. Good advice, for certain, but at the moment, I didn’t have any. I was grateful for the space to move at my own pace, leisurely shuffling through the fine playa powder in the breezy, cool desert air. There was no need to rush anywhere to see anything, so I could take my sweet time strolling around the cyclone fence that surrounded the platform to The Man, fully enjoying the crisp clearness and vast openness of the desert sky.