earby, three ravers in cold-weather gear are seated around a hookah. Two others are standing — one of them pincushioned with cactus spines, the other trying to fashion a pair of tweezers out of his key ring. It's a tough situation under any circumstances, but all the more so because the tweezer-maker is hallucinating and keeps twisting the metal in the wrong direction. Eventually he gets it right, though, and starts to pluck the spines out of his buddy. No need for me here, so I pick my way down to the fire and track down Scotty, the co-organizer of tonight's festivities. Scotty tells me this is the fifth full-moon party, and the second in this location. The one before this was in a ghost town outside of Pheonix. Scotty has been into the underground for a year and a half and funds the free full-moon parties out of his own pocket. He also helps promote the occasional commercial rave, including an Electric Kool-Aid event two weeks ago. However, he says the commercial raves and even underground clubs are never this good. "I found out after ten months of doing clubs that an every-weekend thing can't be that spiritual," he says. "I want people to see Shiva in the speakers, and at once-a-month parties outside in a setting like this, people are more apt to come prepared to completely let go of themselves." And if they do, then what? The drugs, the dancing, the lugging of a generator and speaker cabinets out into the middle of the desert — done to what end? Is there a purpose beyond the partying? Scotty says yes. "The hardest part of this is to get people to leave here understanding that it doesn't have to stay here. That's the biggest barrier people have to break down — to realize that they can take pieces of the vibe from here back out into mainstream society and prove that people can gather and truly love one another and celebrate positivity in peace." If you look at the underground as a religion, then parties are clearly the equivalent of church services. A place for people of a shared belief to gather once a week, engage in ritual and recharge their ideological batteries before they venture back into a world whose values are, for the most part, antipodal to their own. This much is for sure — you can't just talk the talk in the underground. You either go to parties, or you don't. And if you do, you lead your life well outside the normal parameters of your society. The odd hours alone ensure that.