1:59 p.m. - 2003-09-15
Bman '03: Monday Part I.

MONDAY ~ Part I

At 1:30am, Burning Man had been admitting its tribe for only 90 minutes, but the queue of RVs, trucks and cars was already a daunting one. I rolled down my window and echoed a howl of joy from another car, the noise faintly visible on the cold, dry night air.

After a good 20 minutes of idling and inching forward in the truck, we were able to pull into the Will Call area for Skot's ticket.

A tired and surly dark-haired woman wearing a red satin bustier and a black eye searched for the grail with no result. She checked again, then peppered Skot with a series of rote and weary questions.

I overheard "D'you mean to tell me that you didn't receive your ticket in the mail and just assumed it'd be here?"

Skot said yes.

(This did not seem stupid; the website says that checks received after a certain date will result in tickets held at Will Call).

The gatekeeper sighed heavily and gave Skot the paperwork for a dicey future appeal for the return of his original funds. Skot serenely purchased a second ticket, as I twitched quietly on the sidelines. ...This sort of bureacratic morass was the reason I'd purchased Keelie's $145 ticket at a scalped and unsportsmanlike price of $200. As I've heard said--I demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.

We wove back into line and idled again while Juno Reactor's "Pistolero" spun on the CD player; lawless, dusty, fast, mysterious. The city itself, at a glance.

After a few more minutes the Ford crawled forward just enough, and we were set upon by cute and friendly Greeters, recognized as non-Virgins--and past Burners, for that matter--and with the traditional benediction of "Welcome home!" we were waved into the bosom of Black Rock City in its first and last few hours of eerie quiet.

We drove 5mph past the usual signs bearing quotes, instructions and exhortations, turned left at the base of the horseshoe layout and drove up the late side of the clock. Almost an hour after we'd first driven through the gates, we arrived at 8:30 and the intersection of Reality & Imagined.

We parked the truck and set up our tents near the edges of civilization, in a vast darkness broken only by two hissing propane lanterns. It was very cold, and rather windy--the leather jacket and gloves I'd brought were welcome, although Tem was amused by the coordination of my clothes.

"You look like you're about to go downtown."

After years of forest camping in half-cabins and borrowing half-erected tents from other Burners, I was unfamiliar with single-handedly raising a tent, but I managed, for which I was disproportionately proud. (I needed a second pair of hands to secure the rainfly, but the wind insisted). Then came camping mattresses and other modest evidence(s) of the Divine.

Our minimum preparations finished, we consulted a map regarding the placement of nearby bathrooms, walked 100 yards to these, and from there staggered out to the Laser Man.

The 80-foot Man was a good half mile away, but appeared seductively closer minus a single visual obstacle, like an island in the open sea.

Two dozen people crowded on various levels of the his several-story Aztec pyramid platform, many of them intoxicated a good 4 hours into the event.

...I had brief fantasies concerning the structural soundness and potential visual hilarity of their tents--which was silly. A dedicated drug user probably arrives in an RV, requiring infinitely less set-up and allowing more time to get cracking on the hallucinogens.

I climbed strangely steep stairs to the observation deck and wandered, forgetting to take an upwards photo of the Man's blue neon inseam. I was obsessed instead with staring at the stars, reaquainting myself with the long-lost Milky Way. Nevada has the best view of the stars I've ever seen.

For the first time, I noted that a Nevada August has the immistakeable constellation Orion, just clearing the mountains.

...I had always been told that Orion was a Winter phenomenon, and had believed this to be true, even that far South. I have never seen Orion's distinctive stars at previous Burns, and the unexpected presence of my favorite constellation was disorienting and thrilling.

Then again, almost everything is disorienting at 5:30am.

And the walk back to camp and the subsequent sleep was thrilling, even though it only lasted for four hours.

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