by Brian Doherty
It’s the week before Labor Day, and you’re on your way to a party held in the widest expanse of pure nothing in the Lower United States-150 square miles of dry, cracked clay in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert near the tumbleweed town of Gerlach. Since the event is taking place on Land owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), your hosts have had to pay for an official environmental assessment that objectiveLy describes your destination: “The environment for the proposed action contains no true soils; surface or ground water; vegetation; wildlife; threatened or endangered species; wild horses; paleontology; solid or hazardous waste material; wilderness; or cultural resources.” The most prominent words on your admission ticket read, “You voluntarily assume the risk of serious injury or death by attending.”
So why are you-and some 24,000 other people-not simply resigned to attending this get-together but positively ecstatic at the prospect of spending the last week of summer in a hot, god-forsaken dry lake bed beset by unpredictable windstorms, flash floods, and bone-chilling drops in temperature after sunset?
