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Suffice to say that if you're at this party, you really wanted to be here. Taz knew the number to call for directions. The secret-agent routine required to get the location isn't just for show in this case — full-moon parties are the antithesis of a commercial rave: No one is there to make any money, and no one is there to watch the ravers like monkeys in a zoo, and no one is there to enforce the rules of the real world. At 11:30, there were only about 50 people on the hilltop with the fire, the sound system and the generator. But by midnight, a caravan of headlights could be seen descending the mountainside about two miles away, and one by one the crowd has easily tripled. Roughly 100 people are dancing or standing around the fire, another 15 are cuddling in a nearby mine shaft, and at least 35 are wandering aimlessly in the desert. There are three kinds of LSD and two varieties of MDMA circulating through the crowd, but only about half of the people here seem to be tripping. Almost all of those in the desert, however, have been hit hard by a particularly wicked variety of acid sold on pastel splotched tabs of paper for five bucks a dose. I thank myself for abstaining as I watch the flashlights of confused psychonauts bobbing in the dark, some of them almost a mile away. I worry for a moment how many are out there without any light. Nothing I can do about it, so I climb a nearby hill to a point where the panorama is so clear and wide that it seems like I can make out the curvature of the Earth. 
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he scene is timeless — dancers gathered in front of a flickering fire to celebrate the full moon. The music, however, is pure: break beat spun hard and fast by Emile. It's 1 a.m. on a Thursday morning, and I'm at a party on top of an Arizona mesa 45 minutes and one mountain range from the nearest pavement. The "road" here was a Jeep trail that in some places was more hazardous than the dry riverbeds it paralleled. 