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A total of twenty-five friends were headed from San Francisco across the Sierra toward our rendezvous in the Black Rock Desert that day. Significantly absent among them was Julia, my girlfriend at the time. We were all in our late twenties or early-to-middle thirties, yet none had found brides or husbands. Although we were all older than our parents were when they had us, the idea of having children ourselves still seemed a far-off abstraction.