A constant wash of sound surrounds you on its way to the unseen mountains: music, some very local and some loud enough to be heard a mile away; people talking, shouting, singing; police sirens (spoofed), train whistles, megaphones, sound effects; the occasional roar of flamethrowers and the constant bang, pop, and sparkle of fireworks. Once in a while there's a truly concussive explosion, somewhere -- there's no flash, but you feel it in your chest. If you walk out onto the playa to escape (or just to check out those blinking lights; are they a hundred feet away, or a mile?) you enter a velvet dark, a vast space devoid of anything but distant lights and sounds. Your senses stretch out into it; is there something ahead to trip over? How close is that bicycle whizzing by, completely invisible? A line of bobbing green lights resolves, in the sudden flash from an exploding rocket, into a family wrapped in glow-sticks, even the dog. Walk toward the Man.