The Approach

We’d been in the car since 1:00am, starting our journey when it was dark and cold. It was now about 11 o’clock or noon and the sun we’d get to know better was introducing itself and making itself well known. We got to the little town of Gerlach off Hwy 447, the last stop before Black Rock City which is a mere 12 miles away. Calling it a town might be a stretch. Wikipedia says the combined population of the Gerlach-Empire area was 499 people in the 2000 census. There are more active MiPLers than that. There was one main road that had a gas station with the last flushing toilet we’d befriend, a saloon and three taxidermy shops — because when you’re in the middle of nowhere, 2 hours away from the nearest real-size town — you need options for stuffing and mounting things that used to be alive. But I digress.

Gerlach is everyone’s last stop before BRC. You see cars streaming in from multiple directions all coming for Burning Man because I don’t think anyone ever just passes through Gerlach on their way to somewhere else. And it’s not hard to tell that all the vehicles are there for Burning Man. There are fancy Tiogas, rented RVs, vintage trailers, truck-beds piled high with unidentifiable masses covered with tarp and strapped down with bungees except for the fur-adorned bicycle peeking out. Then all of these vehicles merge into a single lane that leads us into Black Rock City.

As we take our place in the queue, we see the string of cars willow in front of us. We can’t tell where they’re going. From the top of the road, it really looks like they’re all driving into nothing but dust before they disappear. So of course we follow. We’re waiting in line for probably an hour or so. I can’t tell, I’m getting too excited. Our walkie-talkie channel is now filled with miscellaneous chatter. Some guy named Daniel, who sounds like he’s an Aussie, is looking for the official BM channel. Another voice is surprisingly tyring to verify that their friend really wants to start in on the ‘shrooms already. There are signs on the side of the road posted intentionally to help us pass the time. They’re pretty random, which at first is quaint but something about them starts to annoy me. Believe me, I appreciate obscure but it seems like someone tried too hard to be random. I’d rather stare through the dust and imagine what lays ahead.