Big Cypress: eight hours, one sunrise, no phone

I was 24 and working nights at a hospital in Gainesville. I traded three shifts to get to that swamp and I would have traded thirty.

What nobody tells you about the midnight set is how long eight hours actually is. Around 3am the crowd stopped being a crowd and became something closer to a small temporary town — people sitting down in the sand, people sharing oranges, a guy who had clearly not planned this sleeping upright against a speaker stack and somehow still nodding on beat.

Then the sky went from black to gray to a color I have never successfully described to anyone. The band was still playing. It felt less like a concert ending and more like a shift change.

I've worked a thousand night shifts since then and I still measure sunrises against that one. None of them have won.