Out and About

Curiosity drew the steer to the fence. I approached hoping I might coax a scratch atop the head between the horns, no deal. When you are out on the road a certain degree of mistrust can keep you alive—

I’d jumped from the Bay Area to Cold Springs, Nevada. As drives go it was not much, less than 400 miles.

Fallon, Nevada is 60 miles west of my destination and demarcates the transition zone between the surging metropolitan zones and what I reckon is the emptiness you will find waiting throughout the rest of the state.

There is an exorbitant privilege to living within 400 miles of the Great Basin. Las Vegas and Reno steal the headlines, but once yonder you are in this world far removed from the megalopolis, the sprawling voracious frenzy, this one lonely outpost we named Earth where our 8 billion inhabitants all scramble for their small piece of paradise.

Decades back when wisdom was still popular Highway 50 was titled the lonesomest highway in the world. I have been driving these two lanes for a fair chunk of my days, its not so dog gone lonesome as back in the day.

Between Cold Springs and Beaver, Utah I saw mustang, alfalfa fields, and big rigs laden with alfalfa crops. Along the way I spied remote ranches that tell of people working in the most isolated and remote outposts.

I pulled off in Ely to check my map and snapped a picture of this car. Dusenberg supplied the mechanicals I learned.

I found out the car’s owner had a brother here in a rest home and another coming down from Twin Falls to meet him for the big car show in Elko coming up this weekend. I explained my mission, that I was on my way to Telluride, he loves this town and thought I’d be in for a grand time up there at 11,000 feet above sea level. I told him I’d give it my best try.

I missed sunrise in Cold Springs. I’d got up in the early hours, couldn’t get back to sleep until it was about time to get up and of course then I feel back to dream land. Met the proprietor that runs Cold Springs. He’d arrived in his cart to open for business. I paid $10 to park overnight. He was impressed I’d come in and surrendered my Alexander Hamilton. He was a big well-fed man with tattoos, and a motorized cart he’d likely be well served by scrapping out for walking instead.

I made 180 miles east to Ely, Nevada. Visibility deteriorating, there’s a lot of smoke in the air. Otherwise, it was a merciful 90 degrees— I had a few calls to return. I’d asked for a bid on a collar to stop squirrels from raiding my owl nest box, and a second to check with my skin doctor on a suspicious patch. Neither were good news. I’ll be fabricating my own squirrel stopper and my skin doctor will be skimming off some portion of a piece of me he believes I no longer need or want.

I’ll be in Ridgeway tomorrow and Telluride on Saturday. It is planned that we should do a high elevation assault on a nearby peak and that we will be hiking until we can touch heaven. I told everyone that knocking on heavens door is not likely to work out for me, that I had turned out to be a lot of things in my life and candidate for this privileged afterlife resort is not likely how this all turns out in the end for this piece of gristle.

That’s how a mind thinks once you’ve pushed off away from life with 39 million Californians, once out here rolling through the Great Basin you start seeing things through bovine eyes, through rangeland, sagebrush and pinyon pines. Still as therapy goes I’d recommend a bit of time in the middle of nowhere where you can heal from the gridlock you’ve suffered. The American West is still here waiting in all its stillness, all its open and empty vast space, it is here as a place that won’t likely ever be settled, there is not enough water out here for more than a herd of those pesky iconic mustang and the cattle ranchers that curse their grass stealing ways.