As we got closer, cars started to be more heavily loaded, and had things like "BURNING MAN OR BUST" and "HOME TO BRC" lettered on them with electrical tape. I didn't understand.
We made it to Black Rock City around 6 or so, unloaded the truck (goat and all), set up our tents, and crashed.
Dust is everywhere. The playa is fluffy, the most fine-grained dust on earth sitting maybe an inch deep above the hardpack. Biking is difficult in many places, sometimes impossible, and often it's just easier to walk the bicycle.
Out on the playa I look at the vast expanse of Black Rock City, and I laugh: an entire city filled with stuff to entertain people in altered states of mind. It's so surreal that the altered state of mind doesn't require substances. This place exists not for any real reason, but because it can. Because it needs to. Burning Man is what happens when we throw away all the rules and start over.
Another late night, some more walking. I missed Lost At Last, but I had a good night anyway. Just tonight we noticed the sheer absurdity of the goat: people waited in line, sometimes for hours, in dust storms or the hot midday sun, for the privilege of sticking their heads up a goat's ass. The reward inside might be a small toy, or a sticker, or a brief conversation, but something trivial in any case. Not only did they wait, but while they were waiting, people would sit in the shade laughing at them, and at least one of those people would heckle the line with a bullhorn.
The real eye-opener was when the hecklers ordered the line to do the can-can, and they did. We were all floored by the unintended brilliance of the goat.
I understood that night that Burning Man is the holy land, Shambala, the Land of the Lotus-Eaters. It is the spiritual home for anyone who is more usually considered at least a little bit odd. That's why we say "Home to Black Rock City": Burning Man is the home of the unfettered spirit, the penumbra of the corporeal universe and the world of imagination. People spend months building massive art projects that they bring to the desert and burn at the end of the week. Here, nudity is just another way of dressing, golf carts decorated like peacocks plow through the dust, a giant neon-light Man stands in the center of the circle, filled with fireworks and ready to go up in flames. This is a place of true freedom, to be absolutely whatever you are or want to be. Once a year we make the pilgrimage, we immerse ourselves in the pure essence of being, and we take that essence back to our everyday lives.
As John put it, "Oh yeah, dude, this place is fucking Brigadoon".
But my feet hurt, I busted up a few toes and my heels are cracked from the dust and dryness, and the evening is mostly spent at camp, before passing out.