NOT LONG AFTER I REACH THE DESERT I REALISE IT IS trying to kill me. The land has been baked hard by an unrelenting sun. The wind whips the alkaline dust into angry dervishes. The playa seems to stretch out to infinity. It is too hot and too dry here for life to ever feel welcome. This is Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, 1,000 square miles of absolutely nothing. It is so flat and so empty that you might come here if you were trying to set a land speed record, or launch a rocket into space. What kind of maniacs would look at this alien void and decide to throw a party?
We arrive in convoy. It is the last week of August and hundreds of buses and RVs and U-Haul trucks and cars are crawling along Highway 34 away from the last glimpse of civilisation, a tiny no-horse town called Gerlach. Turning on to the final desert dirt track our vehicles slow to 10 mph. At the gate, greeters encourage us to climb down and roll in the dust. They are wearing bondage gear or nothing at all, and they want to give us a hug. ‘Welcome home,’ they say, but what they mean is ‘welcome to Burning Man’.