John M Glionna - Outback Nevada: Real Stories from the Silver State

Many peoplemostly tourists, but also urban Nevadansseem bewildered by the concept of taking that unheralded drive between Las Vegas and Reno, or exploring any of the states hinterlands, like it was some crazy rocket launch into the void of outer space.

Whats out there? they ask. Just a bunch of nothingness?

The question has always baffled me. Its not nothingness, I say. But something-ness. Because out there is where the real Nevada lies.

Whenever I grow weary of the noise of my Las Vegas life, when my suburban neighbors begin to grate and I itch for infinite vistas and endless two-lane straightaways, I point my car north, toward Nevadas untamed outback. Toward Beatty and Goldfield, Tonopah, Pioche and the Big Smoky Valley, Austin, Middlegate Station and Gerlach, Carvers, Jackpot and countless points in between.

I drive when I want to see wild mustangs and burros graze on the leather-colored landscape just off the highway tarmac. I drive when I want to gaze up at night skies so profoundly black I can see the glowing Milky Way and imagine just how far away heaven might be. I drive when I want to follow the swirling dust clouds kicked up by a country boy in a pickup truck, gleefully barreling down some anonymous dirt road, carving out his own freewheeling rite of passage, a young man leaving a trail of smoke and grit to rival any jet engine, one that might be seen from the moon, for all I know.

When doing journalism or just for thrills, I drive when I want to see, hear and feel rural Nevada, the real Nevada, that country-hearted salve for my curious big-city soul.

I first launched my explorations into Nevada in 1994 as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. I worked as a so-called rover, a parachutist who dropped into places far outside city limits, on the lookout for hidden subcultures and offbeat tales.

On one of my first assignments, a profile of the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, one federal official sized up thebitter community resistance to the proposal. With most projects, he said, you have your NIMBYSNot in My Backyard. But when it came to nuclear waste, you had the NOPESNot on Planet Earth.

Nevada, I soon discovered, could be a land of scorching debate, with battles over such issues as horse-versus-cattle grazing rights and the preservation of such endangered species as the Mojave desert tortoise, Peregrine falcon and Lahontan cutthroat trout.

In 2012, I returned to Nevada full-time as a national correspondent. Early on, I asked my editor about the right mix of stories between big metropolises such as Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Denver and the less-peopled high-desert wilderness. He said Id figure that out, and I did: I preferred being somewhere out there. I put the city lights squarely in my rearview mirror whenever I could.

In 2015, I left the Los Angeles Times after 26 years, but remained in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson to launch a freelance career. I wasnt done with Nevada, not by a long shot. Id tell friends that while I could take or leave Las Vegas, the desert still beckoned. It kept me here. It rooted me.

I met with an editor at the Las Vegas Review-Journal and told him that while I believed his paper aggressively covered Las Vegas, its reporters rarely ventured out into states wide-open spaces. I offered to wander Nevadas outback as a freelancer. And to my delight, he agreed.

I set out to tell real-life stories of hard-edged stubborn characters, both loners and fools, and chronicle small-town goings-on. For leads, I sought out judges, ranchers, shop owners and weekly newspaper editors, those shrewd tour guides to rural life.