US Highway 50, Utah, Nevada and the Border Inn

Border Inn Motel, Slots, Café
oil on canvas
16 1/2 x 21 1/4 inches

This painting can be seen at William Havu Gallery in Denver, Colorado.

The Border Inn lies on the Utah-Nevada between Delta and Ely, Nevada. It is a welcomed sight for those not noticing the sign that read NEXT SERVICES 83 MILES back in Hinckley, Utah. That is a long haul without any habitation. The course of the highway and the signs that remind you to watch for deer, cattle and falling rock lie in brush and stubble. Because of the beautiful nature of desolation, bullet holed trashcan pullovers pass by in silence.

If the border tied into traffic from Salt Lake City, it would be like Wendover and Mesquite crawling with Mormons on gentile retreats for the weekend. The alpine peaks of Great Basin National Park are not much of a draw. Before the park, nobody knew what was there. As it is, most of the time, you can have much of the park to yourself.

On many Nevada highway borders, there are places like the inn proudly displaying gambling signs. This is too small for anything more than a few slot machines. Still it is small town Nevada away from the industrialized gambling of Reno and Las Vegas. The West survives in these towns along the highway due to isolating wind, heat, cold and snow. Because of the lack of water, farming was never really an option. When the ore played out, many towns vanished in the sage. Part of what kept these hanging on was vacant highway. You’ll probably have to stop at two or three of these for a hamburger and gasoline. Nevada takes openness for granted. NEXT SERVICES 83 MIILES was a courtesy of Utah. Nevada goes on the assumption that you are not going to gamble on the accuracy of a fuel gauge as you leave Ely for Eureka or Lages Station.

Handmade booklet for painting
4 9/16 x 3 1/8 x 3/8 inches

A Railroad Crossing Outside of Hazen, Nevada

The following is from a handmade book for one of the paintings in The Loneliest Road in America exhibition at Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas 2010.  In describing the Great Basin, my thoughts turned to wildfires.

A Railroad Crossing Outside of Hazen, Nevada
oil on canvas
16 1/16 x 36 1/8 inches
2008

Although it had been green across most of the state, many low-lying areas remain barren even in years of abundance.  All of us have seen or heard how deserts bloom after rain showers.  That happens here as well, but not as often as it does in Texas or New Mexico.  It is not only a matter of it being dryer; it is also due to the timing of the rainy season.  The monsoons of the desert Southwest arrive in summer.  In much of the Great Basin, precipitation falls as snow when plants are dormant.  Because most of Nevada has no drainage, snowmelt stands in low-lying areas awaiting evaporation, saturating soils with mineral salts that never make the sea.  The soils are toxic to an awful lot of plants, including many weeds.

 

I wonder how so many of the world’s plants came to be weeds.  Until recently, anything native qualified, and juniper are still thought to be in need of clearing.   Nevada is said to have had vast grasslands when the cattle arrived; the sea of sage is explained as overgrazing.  At Great Basin National Park, displays say the landscape is new due to fire prevention.  From driving around, I agree that northern Nevada was mostly grassland, but the pinion and juniper that drape mountainsides along US Highway 50 have been there for a very long time.  That can be a problem with scholarship.  Historical documents talk about vast grasslands and some assume that applies to the entire state.  Early travelers followed the Humboldt River where mountains and hills are simply sage.  It is a mistake to extend that description to other ranges of the region.  If the Snake Range was not thick with juniper and pinion pine 100 years ago, where did the evergreen abundance come from?  It takes hundreds of years to grow trees of any size in the dry climate.  Count the tree rings; fires were not routinely roaring through the forests.

 

There are some parts of the country, where burning the undergrowth is the same thing as burning up trees.  Nevada is not a land of towering pines like Florida or northern California.  The brush cannot be burned without torching the oak, juniper and pinion pine.  The many fires have more to do with climate change than unwise fire suppression.  When you go from three dry years in ten, to seven, fire becomes reality.

 

 

Suppressing fire with fire promotes grass, as any rancher knows.   A few years ago, a ridge burned not far from my parents’ house.  Before the fire, the flat was open, and most of the oak and juniper grew along the hillsides.  It was lichen-covered rock, dwarf sage, wildflowers and very little grass.  The quick burning fuel that drives wildfires was in short supply.  Afterwards, golden waves of grass tumbled into the woods waiting to be thunderstruck.  Instead of quelling the threat, it is raring to explode.  That might be why ranges that burn keep catching fire.    

 

 

 

  

Handmade Book
4 1/2 x 3 1/8 x 3/8 inches
2010

US Highway 50: Great Basin National Park, Bob Scott Summit and other Stops along The Loneliest Road in America, and a Painting of Playa



Wheeler Peak, Great Basin National Park, Nevada

 

In 2005, my brother Steve and I hit US Highway 50 to pursue a book devoted to The Loneliest Road in America.  The idea came from a conversation that happened while camping in Great Basin National Park.  Painting the highway had been on my mind for many years, and Steve being a writer suggested turning it into a book.  Having parents in Fillmore, Utah and Reno, Nevada, we grew up with a 500 mile commute between families.  I mentioned that in a statement written for an exhibition at Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas.  There was sometimes an assumption that the title was a reflection on a lonely childhood when it was actually a description of place.  That is the official name of the highway.  Childhood was how I knew of the Great Basin.  I was never lonely in a car.  There was too much to see for me to be anything but engage.  The sky sailed high above pinion and sage as travel profiled range after range on a blue horizon.  Life got in the way.  The book never happened.  Individual passages written for specific paintings is as close as we got to that compilation. When I wrote the following, my audience initially seems to be Steve.

 

Playa

 

Playa
oil on canvas
17 3/8 x 7 15/16 inches
2009

 

It has been more than four years since we stopped in the little valley cradled between the outskirts of Fernley and the bend in the road known as Hazen, Nevada.  I don’t know where you were or what you were doing while I shot photographs of the hills and playa that framed the northern view of a land that lead to Lovelock and beyond, but it was so far away that it was out of view even in the clean crisp air of an unusually cool June morning.  Perhaps you were taking notes that could describe in concrete detail the memory of a land I just tried to communicate to you.

 

I was on the road a couple of months ago and passed this way.  The previous day took me as far as Bob Scott Summit.  Having no desire to travel the night, I crawled off into a sleeping bag in the back of the Sonata.  A starry sky filled the windows of my modest accommodation.  What a luxury that was.  The city intensifies darkness, burning out nearly all the shades between black and white, leaving night as subtle as compressed charcoal.  However out here in the pinion, the stars shine bright, and night is lighter than I ever imagined it to be, even in the absence of moonlight.

 

Morning view of Austin, Nevada

 

I left in early morning starlight and headed for Austin Summit to capture the rise of dawn.  I got out of the car.  I was glad to be wearing gloves.  October had frozen the shoulder of the road I walked along taking pictures of the pass.  Aspen slopes glowed green, yellow and gold, and the sage was weather-beaten.  In Austin, the first service station hadn’t open yet.  The next station was the only other station in town.  Its signage read pay before you pump, so I stayed on the highway.  Just outside of town, I reconsidered that decision.  Fallon was 111 miles away and there was no warning sign.  When you leave Green River, Utah, a sign emphatically states that the next services are 109 miles away.  I guess Nevada figures if you’ve made it this far, you already know there won’t be anything out there.

 

It was early afternoon by the time I passed by the playa; I had taken many pictures along the way making my travel time even longer.  It was not the same.  Two or three drilling rigs now inhabit the small valley.  The reason I am not sure of the number is I had no desire to document what I saw.  I realized that this end of the highway was filling in.  Americans are always looking for a home on the range.  However, because they want space to be convenient, the city grows out to where the wind blew not so long ago, unrestrained, kicking and chasing tumble weeds just to disturb the dust, never ever caring that the dust just wanted to settle down somewhere out on the playa.

Handmade book for Playa
4 1/2 x 3 x 3/8 inches