Nevada is my solitude tonic. California is many things and there is found here plenty of emptiness. If on the other hand you are looking not just for solitude but want a real taste of what the Lower 48 has to offer in the way of near as you can get to nothing, I’d recommend you suit up put on your all terrain tires and head outbound into Nevada’s least populated parts.
There is a notional sense of isolation. You can go to your room, close the door, put on your earplugs, close your eyes and transport yourself away— that’s one solution.
To go to the far reaches of nowhere you’ll need to locate Las Vegas and Reno and be sure you get the hell away from both. Fifty miles will do— 100 miles is better— and figure 400 miles is transformational. Best to mark on a map where Salt Lake City, Pocatello and Twin Falls are located too. Encroachment might not mean much to an actuarial calculator, but for the purposes of finding the peace and serenity you seek the further distant your destination the better.
Now all this gosh darn nothingness appeals to few of our citizens and for the love of having near everything you need delivered by UPS I’d say most folk would find this way of life a bit too steep a price to pay just to hear yourself think. Thinking of course has become overrated in this day and age of rage.
I’d approached three men near Ruby Marsh. Miners off for the weekend had come north by tricked out aftermarket enhanced all-wheel drive rigs. One was a Toyota, another was a Jeep, a third was hard to know exactly it had been so radically transformed.
I had wanted to continue south from Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge. All three shook their heads. The spokesman of the three urged me to reconsider unless I had the same kind of jumbo tires with aggressive tread that these rigs all sported. He wasn’t fooling around and wanted to help me make a good decision. First if I was to try the road it was going to be about 100 miles of dirt, dirty and more dirt. He warned that most was cursed with washboard ruts that would rattle my rig and tooth fillings right out of my jaw. Had I the proper tires, if I had an air compressor (I do have one) and I could deflate my rigs tires there was some chance I could manage traveling this road.
Then there was the matter of surviving Overland Pass. You’ll need to take White Pine County Road #6, sometimes known as NF-112, and generally understood to be one of the most disagreeable roads, if you can even call it that, that you will ever wish to try your luck on. You get the idea. History is full of ill-fated travelers, and none rivals the legend of the Donner Party that way back in the day tried their luck on this chunk of terrain only to end up way further west where misery and snow wrote their sorry end.
My job was at this tender moment in my life not to make a historically dunderheaded mistake and put my life and tooth fillings at risk. My miner guide and now senior advisor even if he was well oiled having had several tall cool one’s with his people warned of a daunting passage trying to make it over this high mountain pass. Of course he was sizing up this gringo honeymooner, he’s seen plenty of my soft in the underbelly types out here. He just understood my kind, my thinking I needed to go see something I’ve never seen before even if I might never survive the trip.
That’s how it goes out here. I had some years back driven out about 100 miles to a hot spring near White Horse Ranch and then successfully made my way to Denio where I spent three days tightening the nuts, bolts and my brains back to tight. I got most of the rattles out even if I near drown in the dust my rig kicked up. Those contrails in the sky had nothing on me. No sir, I’m talking a fine talcum like dust from that two day ride ended up trapped inside my nose. Time heals most wounds, but stupid you’ll need to reckon with until your last dying days.
Your fuel had best be full because you can out here take off one way only to be stopped by the good lord knows what, let’s call it fate, and then because of this miserable stubborn truth of the thing you’ll turn around only to find you’ve not enough fuel to get your butt extracted from the rotten no good predicament you have put yourself into in the first place. You’ll need your noggin to do good work out here or expect the Universe to deliver the spanking your parents likely never actually had the heart to mete out to you in those formative years.
You see Nevada’s most remote corners require something rare, something risky, something you think you got in spades when in fact you ain’t even holding a pair of red 2’s.
I’ll tell you plain and keep facts here as close to the truth as is allowed in this era. You’ll come in from the north. The road is paved for 35 miles, the next 20 are on graded rock. You come in and you will go back out the same way, and that only gets you to within reach of Elko, Wells or Ely, it doesn’t get you really much of anywhere other than what is a paved state highway.
If you are really determined to test your metal, then you’d best bring more than that Swiss Army knife you’ve been packing these last few decades. Bring extra fuel, load up on water, sufficient food supplies are a must, a sky lift jack, shovel, sufficient length of tow strap, electric winch, and a satellite telephone. Then remember that the one thing that can sting the most and will ache in your mind until your last day is having gotten yourself stuck on a road you should have never taken in the first place. You see a beer drinking miner with a serious fishing habit might seem like the last place you’ll find the kind of wisdom you lack, but in fact here is the truth for you to see and know, here you will find a kindred soul trying to increase your 10,000 joys and doing what he can to prevent you from having to confront those equally available 10,000 sorrows— oh, you’ll find enlightenment alright, and it will not look like anything you imagined. I hope some of what I’m telling you steers you clear of trouble. Like that miner I’m just doing what I can to help the next misbegotten solitude seeker—
