Rock Springs, Wyoming – On a stretch of I-80 between Winnemucca and Battle Mountain, Nevada, I did a fun exercise at my daughter’s urging as she, her mom and I eased into our little 1,900-mile jaunt to Chicago, where she’s embarking on a new adventure as a newly minted 24-year-old (her birthday was Saturday).
“On the next straight stretch of road,” she said, “start keeping track of how far you go without having to turn the wheel.”
The Ruby Mountains near Elko, Nevada
Like her mom a native Nevadan, she knows how a Silver State road gets when the going gets … decidedly Far West Remote. One of her friends heads out into the wild of the Great Basin, too, and the mile-counting exercise is one way she passes the time.
As Battle Mountain came into view, the road finally bent a bit. I looked at the odometer. Twenty-five miles on the nose. Pretty strong.
That stretch gave me a chance to look around at the late winter tableau around us: Mountain ranges cloaked in bright white, one after another, separated by valleys carpeted in sage or rocky saddles punctuated by stands of sturdy, wind-twisted juniper.
Contrary to what a lot of people think when they think about Nevada, especially Northern Nevada, this is not the landscape you want to get through as soon as possible, preferably at night. It’s dramatic and awe-inspiring year-round, but catch it a couple days after a snow storm or as 35,000-foot-high thunderheads fill the scorching summer afternoon sky, sending down purple curtains of verga – rain that evaporates before reaching the ground – and you realize you’re in the presence of Mother Earth’s best work.
The Great Basin and southwestern deserts are what were left behind when a shallow sea, which covered the region from about 500 million to 200 million years ago, started to recede. What is now North America was south of the equator, and tropical for a time, then heavily forested; as the planet wobbled on its axis over the eons, and tectonic and volcanic activity raised up mountains and laid them low, then did it all over again many times – read John McPhee’s fascinating Annals Of The Former World for an exhaustive look at the geological record of this and many other parts of the America – the climate changed and millions of species, including the dinosaurs, came and went. Fossilized remains of prehistoric sea creatures can be found all over Nevada including the Berlin-Icthyosaur State Park near Austin, in the dead center of the state. And beneath parched, sere old sea beds are vast reserves of fresh water filtered through alluvial sands and ancient rock, and likely to remain there, untouched, forever, unless the human ingenuity-slash-greed machine dips into them.
Want more reason to slow down and savor this seemingly unforgiving chunk of the country? The crust below Nevada continues to slowly but surely stretch apart along mountain escarpments, accordion-like, and every few years, new hot springs emerge – in fact, since it’s the lower 48’s most mountainous state by far with hundreds of ranges, Nevada is also the most seismically active.
Not exactly a wasteland. Never has been, never will be.
Reno is on the western edge of the Great Basin, with the Carson Range, Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada crest to the west and south. Most visitors head understandably head that way, into the familiar mountains and all the well-trod alpine treasures they bestow. But next time – or for the first time, if you’ve never stepped foot in America’s eighth largest state – follow Nevadans into the isolated ranges to the east, into their hidden, leafy canyons, and into the sprawling spaces between. By day you’ll marvel at the rumpled drama of it all; by night you’ll find some of the darkest night skies in the United States. It all adds up to some surprising high desert sustenance.
Our own journey-within-my-Lenten journey continues. Next stop, Omaha.
Thanks, Vic! You're right, there's tremendous beauty in the Nevada east of Reno. I've had opportunities to see it over the years and look forward to getting out there with my camera one of these days soon.