The Gate Line

The gate line into Black Rock City.

For some people, the hard part of Burning Man is getting tickets. For me, the hard part is figuring out the domestic logistics and letting the relevant people know I’m going. The first half of that problem was resolved in July 2022 when I told my wife. That meant I got to go.

I drove to Big Pine in the Owens Valley and sat in the gate line for hours. Sasquatch — my electric scooter, named before I’d ridden it, sitting unused in the truck bed — had a companion vehicle whose trailer blew tires and ground its wheels down near Hawthorne. That delayed arrival to Sunday mid-day. I stayed in a hotel in Fernley for a shower and a nap before the official exodus.

The gate line is part of the event. By the time you’re in it, you’re in it. There’s no getting around the hundred thousand cars all attempting to enter a temporary city through a single-lane desert road. You wait. You talk to the people in adjacent vehicles. You drink enough water. You get there when you get there.

The first time I went through the gate in 2022 was my first time through the Burning Man gate since 2016. Six years. The playa looked the same. The scale still doesn’t parse correctly from the road. The city still assembles itself out of nothing in the Black Rock Desert, same as always.