Wide Open

Nevada’s parks ebb and flow with the seasons and the water they receive, and it means they grow and change so one visit is never enough. There is no better reason to explore than just because the parks offer a chance to get outside, get away from it all, and discover your wildest dreams.

On my frequent trips between northern and southern Nevada, I have a lot of time to look at the landscape. As I pass close to Area 51, I keep a keen eye out for alien or unusual phenomena. 

I’ve spent nearly 300 hours in the car and used 700 gallons of gas to seek out more than 70 ghost towns. I’ve drank 36 cups of coffee, eaten 36 breakfast burritos, and spent 36 days on the road. I’ve encountered at least 3 flat tires, and many more migraines as a result. I’ve explored ghost towns in weather that fell well below 32 degrees, and well above 105. I’ve written roughly 26,500 words about these places in 12 different issues of Nevada Magazine, equating to about 2.2 words per mile. I’ve seen thousands of deer, hundreds of antelope, dozens of elk, and a couple trout. I’ve seen billions of sagebrush and stars. I’ve gazed across infinite miles of this great state; God’s own country.

Oily indigo smoke billowed from a circular opening in the top of a strange beehive shrine, marking the near completion of a process as foreign as the 1800s Nevada frontier had ever seen. Weeks prior, cords of juniper and pinyon were lain into the rocky tomb, set ablaze, and cooked in the oxygen-starved environment, as observant eyes kept watch of the smoke, and attentive hands operated a series of flues. At first, the smoke burned white, then yellow for a couple days, then dark blue, marking the completion of the process. An uninformed Nevada frontiersman who witnessed these makeshift mausoleums may have attributed the colossal bulbous structures to the occult, maybe even gone as far as to believe they were a portal to the underworld.

As the sun sets and light slowly fades from the sky, stars begin to appear and the dark side of Nevada shows itself. Long known for remote and beautiful landscapes, Nevada is now being recognized for its exceptionally dark skies. In March, the International Dark Sky Association designated the Massacre Rim Wilderness Study Area (WSA) in northern Washoe County as an International Dark Sky Sanctuary, only the fourth location in the country to achieve this status and the seventh in the entire world.

Just around suppertime on July 11, 1912, housewives prepared meals, miners clocked in and out, and children played in the streets of the northwest Nevada mining camp of Mazuma. The town rested at the mouth of Seven Troughs Canyon, just below the mining camp of the same name, and on that day, everything seemed normal in this little slab of sagebrush, save for an unusually colossal gathering of somber thunderclouds that hovered just up the canyon. Then, amid thunderous roars and cloudburst, a biblical tsunami rained down upon the canyon as if Heaven’s bathtub had swiftly cracked in two.

More than 100 years ago, southern Nevada pioneers and prospectors spent every day surviving on the razor-edge of death. Mucking, sweating, and blasting in sweltering summers and stinging winters. They moved earth as they dug their dwellings into the sides of mountains, sleeping in ramshackle huts made of rock and wood. They tossed fire and brimstone over their shoulders with shovels and pickaxes as they sought to manifest their destiny. They took up arms against Mother Nature, who tried her hardest each and every day to convince them that living there wasn’t worth it, but they only thumbed their noses and kept digging.