Stories from Nevada

[brigdh]

1. I don't know if you've ever been to Nevada. I hadn't (well, I'd been in the Las Vegas airport, but I'm not sure that counts). It is a forsaken wilderness, empty of all human habitation.

Look at a map of the state, for instance. Now, if you look at a map of, say, Ohio, you might notice two or three cities listed and a lot of blank space. Cleavland at the top, Columbus in the middle, Cincinnati at the bottom. Perhaps Toledo in the upper left corner. But you would understand that the blank spaces on the map are not actually blank. There are cities there, just ones not big enough to be granted map-status. Perhaps ones so small that they don't even have names. Failing that, you might expect to find a few houses, by themselves off in a woods or on a hillside. At the least, you would see a farm. You might only see cows or rows of evenly spaced corn, but even that is a sign that there were once humans here.

A map of Nevada would show a few cities along the bottom: Reno, Las Vegas. Much of the middle and top would be blank. And that space is actually blank. Nothing is there except for vast tracks of empty land. I did not know that this much uninhabited space still existed anywhere in the world, except for maybe some of the worse stretches of Antarctica. I think I got culture shock from it; I can't stop trying to describe it to people. If your car broke down while driving on the highway across Nevada (Highway 93: America's Loneliest Highway!), you would die. There's easily over a hundred miles from one human location to another, and most people do have in their cars the food and water that you would need to walk that far. There's no cellphone reception, there are no call boxes, hell, we couldn't even pick up radio stations in the car. Your one hope would be to flag down some of the (sparse) passing traffic- an option better than death on the side of the highway, sure, but I don't know how good an idea pulling over unknown people while on an deserted highway with no witnesses would be.

2. Everyone in Nevada and the surrounding states hates Las Vegas. Because it's stealing their water. People feel scarily strongly about this.

3. There was a town called Pioche near to where we camped, a half hour or 45 minute drive away. We often went there on weekends. Pioche is considered a good-sized city because it has two gas stations, neither of which is open 24 hours. It also has a diner, a drugstore, two bars, four antique stores, and a jail. Many of the things that I would consider necessary for a city were missing, such as a doctor/dentist/hospital/any form of medical care, a place to buy clothes, or, I don't know, a grocery store, but the residents of Pioche didn't seem to mind.

One weekend, desperate for news, I went into one of the gas stations. "Do you sell newspapers?" I asked. The clerk pointed. I, thinking he was pointing to the last aisle, took a few steps forward.

"No!" he said, and pointed again. I looked behind me. "There." He pointed one more time, and I noticed that he was indicating a little wooden box sitting on the counter. It held the local newspaper, a three-page-long weekly whose current front page story was about a little league t-ball game.

"No," I said. "I mean, do you have any real newspaper? New York Times, USA Today..."

"Oh. We don't sell those. You could try the other gas station."

We did. It wasn't open on Sundays.

The next weekend, we were back in town. It was Labor Day Monday, and the drugstore was open. I walked in and noticed a huge stack of newspapers. "Oh!" I shouted. "Newspapers! Can I buy one?"

The lady at the counter told me: "No, those aren't for sale. This is just where they drop the papers off to be delivered."

"Please?"

She showed me one she had left over from Sunday: it was a Las Vegas Review, missing its front page, several of the headlines cut out, falling apart at the seams, and with a footprint on it. I was so desperate for news that I agreed to take it. She charged me full price.

4. I was almost killed by an elk.

Before I went to Nevada, I was under the impression that elk were deer. No. Elk are the horrible lovechildren of deer and elephants. They are fucking huge.

I was sitting in the forest one day while we were working- much of our work involved, basically, hiking. I'd finished the line I was supposed to do and was writing paperwork while I waited for some people to catch up.

I heard some branches rustle and looked up to see a pair of legs walk through some trees off to my left. Before I could call out to Liz, the girl who was walking the line to my left, I saw another pair of legs go by. Liz doesn't have four legs, I thought, intelligently, to myself. The elk came out of the trees and stood in a clearing, stopping while it looked around. I froze. This thing was less than 15 feet away from me, and I was sitting on the ground with my legs crossed and a clipboard in my lap. I really didn't want to draw its attention.

We stayed like that for about a minute, when I had the genius idea that I should take a photo of the moment. Unfortunately, my camera was in my backpack, which was between me and the elk. I stood up slowly and took a step forward, but it heard me, and turned around to face me. The only coherent thought that ran through my mind right then was Jesus Fucking Christ, those are some huge antlers. The top of my head- and I'm not short, 5'7- did not come up to the elk's chin. I jumped backwards, and somewhere in the midst of debating if I would have time to climb a tree if it came towards me, it turned the other way and ran off.

Once my heart started beating again, it was pretty cool.

5. I've spent the last six weeks sleeping in a tent, waking up at 5:30 to eat, pack a lunch, pack lots of water, gather supplies, load the van and jeep, drink disgusting instant coffee, and be gone from camp by 6:30. We spent most days hiking, often up the sides of mountains, while carrying backpacks, water supplies, radios, gps units, clipboards, shovels, screens, and whatever we'd found that day. We usually made it back to camp between 5:30 and 6:30. It tended to take an hour to cook dinner (hey, when you're working with canned goods and a propane stove, nothing is easy), and then then we drove the ten minutes to use the park's public shower, a device where, if you didn't push a button every 15 seconds, the lukewarm water gave out on you. By the time we got back to camp, we were exhausted and fell into bed (read: sleeping bag).

I have never been this fit or this tan in my life.

Luckily, though, it hasn't effected my well-developed sense of work ethics: I celebrated my return to civilization by sleeping for over 12 hours, crawling out of bed at 1:30pm, eating take-out chinese, and heading directly for the mall.